News reports and your dining habits

[fresco]

This week, the big news is farmed salmon, with a new study claiming that most of it is full of PCBs and to be avoided, while governments, producers and others claim that it poses little or no risk to human health.

Next week it will be something else--an authoritative source claiming that something is either going to kill you or prevent some terrible disease or condition if you eat or drink enough of it.

Do you just laugh all of this stuff off, or do you actually alter your consumption patterns based on what you read or hear? And how do you make such decisions?

[Mudpuppie]

I try to be common sensical about it. Although not a health nut, I do want to be healthy and I think diet is one way I can, to some extent, take control of my health.

I personally believe that most industries are happier with us not knowing about their respective harms, whether to the environment or our health or whatever. And to that end, they'll definitely disguise or hide the truth. So when scientists or watchdog groups come along and start a furor about the latest thing that's bad for me, I'm happy to have the information. That said, I also realize that the media is screwy and likes to get our dander up about stuff.

So, I take the grain of salt, even though I'm watching my sodium.

Even though we have to be skeptical of the media's presentation of and emphasis on certain stories, I'm glad that they publicize (and over publicize) these things. Someone needs to. The industry isn't going to.

On thursday, Talk of the Nation (NPR) had a segment on the Surgeon General's original report on smoking, which was sort of the first of its kind, and people's reaction to it. It was an interesting show. Not food-related, but it certainly has parallels. You can find the archived show on their website.

[cjs]

I for one would love to see the end of farmed salmon. Here on the west coast of B.C. we use a huge amount of salmon in our daily operations, and its horrifing to see what has happened to the quality of the fish since all this farmed stuff has taken hold. People definatly are getting smarter on thier own, but this latest blitz should just about kill the industry here..

[fifi]

I am pretty much where Mudpuppie is on this one. If we believed all of the doom sayers about the dangers in our food supply, the streets would be littered with bodies. I sure wouldn't want to go back to "the good old days". Have you ever read about the food supply in, say, Victorian England?

That isn't to say that someone has to take the role of watchdog. That is one of the jobs of a free press.

Does any of the hype change my eating habits? No. Not unless there is something very specific like a recall of Brand xxx lot number xxx for reason xxx. But I don't recall one of those instances actually affecting me.

[Katherine]

I can't afford most of the stuff they fight over, so I just ignore their histrionics.

[ExtraMSG]

I definitely don't look forward to the disappearance of farmed salmon. I just hope that it becomes better, both ecologically and gastronomically. Wild salmon is expensive enough right now. I can't imagine what the prices would be like if there was no farmed salmon to compete with and if there was all the farmed salmon consumers putting pressure on the wild salmon industry. Also, ecologically, I imagine we'd have a lot of problems with poaching and over-fishing.

I do wish the media did a better job of relating the true importance of such studies. But I can understand why they don't. The problem is that it has a "boy who cried wolf" impact on many people. I've discussed such things with a friend who has less scientific experience than me who pretty says he never trusts any health studies in the news because "one week butter will kill you, then next it's good for you". And unfortunately, that's how the media often portrays it, when truly, scientific studies usually focus are very specific issues such as the effect of some specific type of fat in butter on a specific risk factor for a specific disease in a specific population of people. Generalities are usually dangerous to draw from scientific studies, but the media makes every attempt to do so, at least in the headlines.

[Suzanne F]

Alcohol is bad for me; I drink it anyway.

Farmed salmon is bad for me; it tastes lousy so I don't eat it anyway.

Scallions could give me hepatitis; I don't eat them raw.

Butter is bad for me; it tastes good so I eat it anyway.

Beef could rot my brain (see first entry above); it tastes good so I eat it anyway.

Soy products may be good for me or may kill me; I'll eat the ones I want to, if they taste good, and ignore the others.

With all due respect to the real journalists here (and I really DO respect the ones here), I'd bet that most of the reports one reads/hears/sees are not thoroughly researched; the latest press release from [whomever] is what you're seeing.

[hwilson41]

I do wish the media did a better job of relating the true importance of such studies.  But I can understand why they don't.  The problem is that it has a "boy who cried wolf" impact on many people.  I've discussed such things with a friend who has less scientific experience than me who pretty says he never trusts any health studies in the news because "one week butter will kill you, then next it's good for you".  And unfortunately, that's how the media often portrays it, when truly, scientific studies usually focus are very specific issues such as the effect of some specific type of fat in butter on a specific risk factor for a specific disease in a specific population of people.  Generalities are usually dangerous to draw from scientific studies, but the media makes every attempt to do so, at least in the headlines.

Precisely. I suspect I'm older than most of the participants here, but FWIW here's my take. I was in high school at the end of the 50s and in college in the early 60s. In high school, I had a paper route and would come home around 5:30a every morning after delivering my papers and eat two or three slices of bacon, two fried eggs, and maybe some toast (if Mom was up too ), and this was virtually every day for about three years. Then later on, we found out about cholesterol and how terrible eggs were for you. Then, even later, the medical profession's posture had to be revised to something along the lines of "Well, dammit, eggs ought to be bad for you...but (whispered under breath) the evidence doesn't confirm that."

Same thing with beef and e-coli. I've been eating raw hamburger since I was in my early teens, and to this day I still eat rare or at most medium rare beef. I've never been sick a day in my life from bad beef.

There are probably some other "scares" I could list if I thought about it longer, but to me the message is clear. These guys who are researching food risks are paid to find "risks", just like the cancer researchers are paid to find things that cause cancer. And if they don't, well then they're liable to find themselves without a job next time the evaluations are done. Remember the scare about nitrates and nitrites? Yeah, bacon is dangerous as hell...provided you eat 11 pounds of it a day. And because of that, I make it a point never to eat more than 10 pounds of bacon in a single day .

The bottom line, at least for me, is that common sense and empiricism are still the best weapons in your arsenal. Farmed salmon is bad due to PCBs, huh? How many people have died from it? How many have gotten sick because of it? And who paid for the study? IMHO a healthy skepticism is totally warranted given just the short history I've lived through. So the next time Tom Brokaw tells you that there's a new deadly something-or-other that's just been discovered, take it with a grain of salt...at best.

THW

[fresco]

With all due respect to the real journalists here (and I really DO respect the ones here), I'd bet that most of the reports one reads/hears/sees are not thoroughly researched; the latest press release from [whomever] is what you're seeing.

I wonder if the problem doesn't start with the researchers themselves, as well as the journals in which they publish.

It doesn't take a lot of smarts to figure out that anything to do with the food supply, good or bad, is going to generate an intense amount of interest if it is spun the right way.

That farmed salmon retain certain chemicals has been known for a long time, for instance, but if you go out on a limb and start prescribing how little of this stuff people should eat to be on the safe side, you know you are going to be in the headlines.

There's a lot of pressure on academic researchers these days, and many of their journals have become as competitive as newspapers.

[Moopheus]

I basically agree with Mudpuppie. A lot of people get sick from food borne illnesses and contaminants. Food industries do not want people looking too closely at what goes into our food.

But on the other hand, it is also true that mainstream news sources oversimplify the issues, especially TV news, who are mainly interested in a scare story. They have to have a scare story every night (one of the local stations, on a slow night, reported that escalators are dangerous). And of course, most people in this country are ignorant of science and statistics. So the message people get is that scallions carry disease, and they panic about scallions. They haven't got a clue what the real risk is, why there's a risk, if there's anything to do about it, etc.

[cjs]

eat a piece of farmed salmon

eat a piece of wild salmon

taste the difference?

thats why I would like farmed salmon to go far far away

[Katherine]

I think the problem is partly due to researchers who believe that their work proves beyond any doubt something that it clearly doesn't, and media journalists who know little or nothing about what they're writing about and are looking for a good sound bite. By the time anybody's actually read the research, the brouhaha has died down, and there's no incentive to retract any exaggerations or misinformation.

If anybody does point out the shortcomings in the research, the reply they get is yeah, well, even if this study/every study yet is badly done/inconclusive/proves just the opposite, the conclusion has been repeated in the press so many time that this makes it true.

eat a piece of farmed salmon

eat a piece of wild salmon

taste the difference?

thats why I would like farmed salmon to go far far away

I'm trying to figure out what you're saying here. You are already free to buy wild salmon. Are you trying to stop people who don't have access to wild salmon (or can't afford to eat it) from eating salmon ever?

[snowman]

There was an interview with one of the lead authors of the salmon study on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.'s science program on Saturday, of which I heard the majority.

His take was quite a bit more nuanced (when he had a few minutes to explain himself) than was the impression I got from the article in the newspaper about his study. (And, while I agree with Katherine about scientists over-plugging their own work,, I don't think it happened here: all they did was to buy salmon from all around the world, and test it for organochlorides. These authors didn't establish the link between organochlorides and cancer; that's from other, more well-established work.)

For example, he gave a reasonable hypothesis about why farmed salmon from Chile was least polluted, which is that S. America has itself been industrialized far less long than N. America (which had moderate levels of PCBs in the salmon), which has itself been less long industrialized than W. Europe (which was the source of the most polluted salmon).

His take was also that farmed salmon could be less contaminated if it were fed a feed that was, itself, less polluted. The working hypothesis is that farmed salmon is less contaminated than the wild because the wild's diet is of fish like shrimp that are themselves not very contaminated, while the farmed's diet is protein and fat from anchovies and other finfish that are contaminated. He also argued that people should eat more salmon, just the wild stuff, and more omega-3-rich fish in general.

I mention this in this thread because it influences how I respond to the article. I'm a scientist myself (and I've been interviewed, and mis-represented a couple of times by mass media). As such, I like to get my news as raw as possible when it comes to food science questions. In this case, my response is likely to be small: I really prefer wild salmon's flavor anyhow, and I've eaten a small amount of fish from Lake Michigan which is quite high in organochlorides as well.

But I think the "mixed messages" and such entirely come from a mass media that *wants* there to be mixed messages. This study, for example, doesn't give mixed messages; it says that farmed salmon could contribute to higher cancer risk. The mixing comes when the media conjoins this research with previous work on fish / heart disease or fish/hypertension.

[FistFullaRoux]

USA Today poll graphic thingee

This poll lists Salmonella, E.Coli, Trans-fatty acids, Mercury, and foot and mouth disease. The lowest percentage of people were concerned about foot and mouth (This does not state if this was strictly Americans that were polled) and that was 44%. I agree with the postings saying that people are getting the message about food safety, but I don't think people are being well-informed. Getting enough information to panic, maybe. but not enough to be considered informed.

Truth be told, this poll does not disclose if the responders were prompted by a multiple choice type answering scheme. It seems doubtful, at least to me, that 44% of the general population could pull mercury or "foot and mouth" disease from the top of their head in a telephone poll. If it was a yes/no response to a list being read to them, maybe.

As someone once said, "going to church does not make you virtuous, any more than going to a garage makes you a car." Or something alnong those lines. I paraphrase.

Edited January 12, 2004 by FistFullaRoux (log)

[Mudpuppie]

There was an industry poll today that said mad cow is only 3rd on the list of food things people are currently worrying about. I didn't post it because it seems so skewed to me, but it sort of reflects USA Today's results. I'd offer that neither is really a statistically sound poll.

http://www.agriculture.com/default.sph/AgN...tml___51153___1

[lala]

Chocolate is bad for you...what? it's Good for you? Wine is bad for you...what? it's Good for you? Chinese food is bad for you...no, that's just the fatty dishes...

I know that most everyone I know pays very little attention to these proclamations. Just eat a varied diet, in moderation, and enjoy it. That way, you won't eat too much of the latest 'bad' food, and maybe you'll be ahead in the end!

[badthings]

When a new story based on a journal paper comes out, I usually just go read the journal paper. The problem is that very few papers in the country have "journalists" capable of understanding the simplist scientific papers (not that they bother to read anything except the journal's press release). Forget TV -- those people are illiterate. It is actually not that hard to read the real studies to see how full of crap they are (or not). In most cases, they are comparable to those USA today polls -- i.e., not relevant to the real world.

The real tragedy is the way normal people are separated from the scientific literature by ridiculous subscription fees that not even libraries can afford. If you don't have access to an academic library, you're forced to depend "journalists" for your information. Your best bet is to read the Times or Post online with a good bullshit detector.

[Pan]

There are some really valuable scientific resources online for free, however. My brother used online medical abstracts accessible on PubMed to help save our father's life over 8 years ago.

[Chad]

When a new story based on a journal paper comes out, I usually just go read the journal paper. The problem is that very few papers in the country have "journalists" capable of understanding the simplist scientific papers (not that they bother to read anything except the journal's press release). Forget TV -- those people are illiterate. It is actually not that hard to read the real studies to see how full of crap they are (or not). In most cases, they are comparable to those USA today polls -- i.e., not relevant to the real world.

Ahem. Not all journalists are illiterate clods. I'll grant you, though, that a lot of simplifying goes on.

To mangle someone else's example, this is not a case of the boy who cried wolf. It is a case of the scientist who cried, "This habitat is capable of supporting a lupine population," a journalist who cried, "Wolves could live here," and a headline writer who cried "WOLVES!!" in 72 point type.

Chad

[hjshorter]

When I was pregnant and nursing I sure as hell paid attention to warnings about mercury contamination, listeriosis, raw beef, etc. Yes, people have been eating those forever, we ate stuff like that as kids, etc., yada yada yada, but when it's your kid, it makes a difference. My parents never made us wear seatbelts either but you wouldn't catch me putting my kids in the car without a car seat.

More information isn't always a bad thing, and the truth is we know more now about potential dangers. I've been following the story on trans fats and had stopped buying them years ago. It's interesting that only now are they becoming a story when I've known about them and the bad things they do, since at least 1996. That's a case when a few more mass-market stories would have been a good thing.

[Mottmott]

I think the problem is partly due to researchers who believe that their work proves beyond any doubt something that it clearly doesn't, and media journalists who know little or nothing about what they're writing about and are looking for a good sound bite. By the time anybody's actually read the research, the brouhaha has died down, and there's no incentive to retract any exaggerations or misinformation.

If anybody does point out the shortcomings in the research, the reply they get is yeah, well, even if this study/every study yet is badly done/inconclusive/proves just the opposite, the conclusion has been repeated in the press so many time that this makes it true.

Add to the list: those of us who, understandably, want a simple answer: "eat this, it's good for you" and "don't eat that, it's bad for you."

Firstly, the answers are evolving and tomorrow's information will cast a different light on what we think we already know. This is a given of how we know the world and we should add to everything we read, "as far as we know now...."

Secondly, we the public want a simple resolution to very complex issues. The more I read about nutrition, food contamination, etc., the more frustrated I become. As far as I can tell almost every food can be either good or bad for you. Sometimes a little is ok but a lot isn't. We "know" that too much fat will clog arteries and kill some of us before our time, but we also know that we can't live without some oils. I'll forgo listing all the foods that will kill us but that we can't live without. But I will indulge myself by citing an example of something I could but prefer not to live without. I'm particularly fond of the bitter almond flavor even though I know it contains some poison. It would take a lot of Amaretti to kill me off, but I can't buy the oil in this country. And so far I've survived using the pits of apricots (arsenic?cyanides? I forget which) when I make jam. Many of us seek out raw cheese, also illegal to protect us. So even non-essential foods are at issue.

We can contaminate ourselves with otherwise nutritious protein in meat, poultry, and dairy products that have been fed growth hormones and antibiotics. Or produce and grains grown with the aid of pesticides. (And, by the way, HAS anyone done a study on whether there is a correlation between the use of growth hormones and the rate of cancer in this country?) How much is too much? Without these practices would there be as much food? Without preservatives could we store food as we need to do under present food distribution practices. While we may revert to a system that does not require these additives at some future time, our current one seems to do so.

We could kill ourselves on the healthiest and purest foods if we eat so much of them that we need to be mechanically hoisted from our houses to be taken to the hospital for lifesaving measures.

No protein, vitamin A, C, etc., would be very bad for us, too much could/would be very bad, too. Do we eat it? don't we?

As others have said, keeping oneself as well informed as possible, and eating a wide variety of foods in moderate amounts is our only solution.

Except chocolate. Chocolate in the morning, Chocolate afternoons, Chocolate at night. Chocolate, chocolate.....