Wednesday 16 April 2008

Scaremongering

Today’s news bombshell that vitamin pills may actually be harmful has finally convinced me to ignore all future media health warnings. It’s fairly obvious now that no one has the faintest idea what they’re talking about. I don’t take vitamins, as it happens. As a vegan it is often suggested that I should, but I’m quite happy that I’m getting all the nutrients I need from my food. Only last week, my friend Ariane suggested that I wasn’t getting enough protein and would probably be dead by the weekend*. The trouble is, every source you seek will give you a different recommendation and you’re only ever likely to listen to the sources that confirm the opinion you’ve already formed. I was curious enough to check the Vegan Society website, and left satisfied that I was not only getting enough protein, but possibly too much. And too much could be dangerous! According to them, protein requirements in adults are often exaggerated. I’m sure if I’d done more research I would have found a site that told me the absolute opposite. Last week two articles caught my eye – one claimed that drinking the much quoted 8 glasses of water a day had no measurable benefits to health or complexion. The other suggested that the people who live longest are those who don’t obsessively worry about their health. The crux of the piece was that stressing about what is or what isn’t good for us just increases anxiety and ultimately shortens our lives. Most centenarians have never dieted or been to the gym, they just keep active and enjoy life. I’m fairly convinced that 90 per cent of all food on sale today is, or contains, something which has been liked to cancer or ill-health at some point. While there are certain things we all know for sure (too much fat is bad, smoking is not advisable, watching The X Factor will induce suicidal tendencies), there’s plenty of knowledge that we defer to so-called experts who are probably just guessing or at best basing their research on irrelevant studies on mice. What do mice know?

* This sentence may contain dramatic embellishment.

3 comments:

Ariane said...

I'm not even going to dignify this post with a response.

Oops.

Ariane said...

Except to say: I like your apple, even if you refuse to eat any.

Please can I have a 'pink heart' favicon for my website? Pretty please with sprinkles on?

Graham said...

I eat plenty of apples. In less than half an hour I will be munching on a Granny Smith.

You could do the favicon yourself - just find a square image of a heart on Google and then hop over to freefavicon.com, where you will find instructions on how to create and upload it.