How business, doctors and journalists prey on your food anxieties I

Lies, ,
damned lies
<strong>and</strong>
Doctors, <strong>journalists</strong> <strong>and</strong> health food vendors have us
scared to death about what we eat, drink <strong>and</strong> breathe .
But most of their studies couldn't pass Statistics 101 .
medical statistics
By Philip E . Ross
IN THE 1973 Ntovte Sleeper, Wood%, Allen plays a health
food salesman who comes out of suspended animation in
the year 2 173 <strong>and</strong> calls for wheat germ, organic honey <strong>and</strong>
tiger's milk . His puzzled doctor asks a colleague wlry
people had once orctcrred such sludge to steak,
cream pics, hor fudge <strong>and</strong> deep tat . "Those were
thought to be tmhcaithy," the colleague
replies, "precisely the opposite of what we
now know to be true ."
Life imitates art . Twentv years too
late, those of us o'caned from real
butter to oilv margarine suddenle
learn that the svntheticaily solidified
oils of margarine, known as transt3m,
acids, wcre worse for our arteries
than any fat fintnd in nature . You
would have been better oll enjoving
nature'ss spread, after all . Just because
something tastes good doesn't mean
it's bad forcou .
_
Such flip-tlops in the histonof health ~'
adcice are the rule rather than the exception,
Todav's bad-for-aou was probabiy once a good-for-N_-ou<strong>and</strong>
\'ice versa . Yet e~en- ncw headline sends millions ofon
a scarch-<strong>and</strong>-dcstrov mission in the pantry or a panicky
visit to the doctor . We ha\e become a nation of nen,ous
Nellies, ready to gi~e up cating pleasures at the drop of a
medicaLreportl Mercun-laden tish is killing u .s, then mt}ee, then eggs,
then it's too much chlorine in water, then it's too little .
Ecen other people's pleasures aro supposed to be dangerous
for us, like secondh<strong>and</strong> smoke .
Strange, isn't it . bVc are living longer <strong>and</strong> healthier <strong>and</strong>
are better nourished than ever beforc, ret imagine our-
13U
sehes beset with pnisons <strong>and</strong> cancer-causing substances .
It's time :br us to recognize that a \~ hole industry exists
to invent, propagate <strong>and</strong> then allcviatc health scares .
Medical schools get thcir grant money by publishing
studies, the Neia Engl<strong>and</strong> Journal of Afedicirae
makes a living publishing them, popularizers
make a nice licing re~rriting medical journal
discoveries as books <strong>and</strong> articles . A large
segment of the grocery products industrv
makes it a <strong>business</strong> to sell so-called
health tbods . Erer notice all the intelligent-looking
folks carefully scrutinizing
the fine print "nutritional"
information on cereal boses, jamjars
<strong>and</strong> soup cans?
We're not against tblks making an
honest dollar routing healthy diets,
but as a publication %eith a he„Ithy
respect for statistics, we can't resist
looking down our editorial nose at some
of the statistical contortions hiding behind
these scares .
Let's start with the most amazing flip-flop of recent
years : alcohol . As the once aristocratic drv martini gace
waa to a glass of «'hite wine, young Americans came to
drink much less than their parents <strong>and</strong> gr<strong>and</strong>parents had .
It had even become hip for some to teetotal . Then, last
year, a group atT'iliatcd with the Hanard School of Public
Health recommended that we consider taking a glass of
svine a dav . The libation was to be part of the Nlcditerrancnn
1)iet-so called because it mimics the low-meat,
olive-oil-rich, mine-soakcd regimen of soudurn Europe,
N.iierc heart disease is relati%ely rare . Further supporting
ecidence came from Iaboettony findings that alcohol raises
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