More from my April 2006 personal computer blog about modern media's health initiatives being a scare tactic:
The latest scare (reported April of 2006) says that grilling foods may cause cancer. Great! At heart of the matter is a time-honored, national holiday tradition. Can you imagine the 4th of July without a barbecue? Well, if we follow the AMA's advice, we'll no longer cook out. Come to think of it, what will be done about food; since it has been said that even healthy foods can cause cancer if eaten regularly, will the stomachs have to go empty?
Oh, wait. That will cause us to die as well!
Nutritionists did lecture us in the 1970s and said that "too much of anything is not good for you." That is true; steak everyday will not make you live the longest life. This is why they developed the food pyramid, to assist in the promotion of a balanced diet with four basic food groups...
But eating healthy, watching the intake and the weight, is supposed to be rewarded, or so I thought. Their underlying message is that nothing is good for us anymore: never mind whether or not it's rated "healthy" on your food pyramid or that it's eaten as often as the other basic nutrients; it will kill us all. What, are the experts saying we will live 150-200 years if we do everything they say?
A more personal slant to that message is that we live in a world where we have been proven unable to think for ourselves. (And yet) people are entitled to think and to do as they please. Everyone has a certain amount of logic in them. Ingest cyanide and don't expect to live. Swallow a potato whole and you'll choke to death. They have an idea about the food pyramid credo. Does this mean they have to follow it by the letter? Seems like that's what the AMA wants us to do, having put so much research into it.
Well, that's for the individual to decide.
Slants aside, we wonder how to best substantiate these scare tactics. Immortals, we have never been. The race itself may last for thousands of generations more, but its members will always be replaced. Make them live longer & longer, and then wonder what to do with the people who remain...
I wish agencies, their advocates, and the media would lighten up on their attitudes on how the general populace lives their lives - and moreso, try not to mess with their peace of minds, and their unerring logic.
