EUGENIZATION.

If you’re a client of mine, you’ve heard me say the title of this blog post at least (by my conservative estimate) 7800 times.

It is so vitally important to apply your critical thinking abilities to the confusing and sometimes scary world of fitness and nutrition, I can’t understate it. In fact, let me say it again:

“Become an educated consumer!”

There, that makes #7801.

So let’s explore what I mean by this and why I’m so bent on repeating it all the time.

Not a day goes by where you’ll read a news headline that will directly contradict something you’ve read somewhere else. If you’re reading a health-related headline, it’s almost guaranteed that you’re reading a headline that contradicts something you’ve previously read or heard.

Here’s a recent example: Antioxidants May Up Women’s Skin Cancer Risk.

Huh? Aren’t antioxidants substances that are supposed to combat free radicals and prevent cancer? (The answer is yes, by the way). So how is it that they cause skin cancer?

Sure, you say, the headline didn’t say outright that antioxidants cause skin cancer. But that’s the message you come away with. Which leads me to the heart of the matter…

Becoming an informed consumer means that you take media headlines and buzz with the proverbial grain of salt. In other words, you say, “Show me the study.”

Or, you have someone whose opinion and judgment you trust (*ahem) dissect it for you.

Here’s the truth: Most journalists are not trained scientists (I know, you’re shocked). In fact, they may possess as little subject knowledge as the layperson. They’re looking for a good story, and in the rush to get a nice soundbite, journalists misinterpret studies (or more likely, the press releases from the organizations that performed the study). Hence, you get a diluted, and likely distorted version of the original findings. It’s like playing that game from your childhood, “Telephone”, where you and about 6 dozen of your friends got together in a big circle, one person whispers, “African Elephant”, and by the time it gets down to you, the message has mysteriously become, “Pantless wrinkled matriarch.”

(I had some…unique…friends in grade school.)

Applying this to the headline from above, it’s a lot less sexy if the headline reads:

“Several factors surrounding antioxidant supplementation may lead to the slight increase in incidence of skin cancers, not the least of which are limited to: quality of supplement, quantity of supplement, supplement interactions with diet, processing and chemical composition of supplement, and other co-mingled factors such as individual propensity towards cancer which may or may not affect the outcome. Which, incidentally, is an increased risk of exactly 0.55%.”

WHOOT - Big news.

It pays to read with a critical mind. I mean, you’d be forgiven for coming off with the wrong idea after reading this article: Vegetarians Are More Intelligent, Says Study.

Sounds good, right? Makes total sense, plausible…

HA - read that article again, and see if you catch it (or, skip to the next paragraph).

You’re probably tired of reading this rant so let me sum it up neatly for you:

1) Since when is eating chicken and fish a “vegetarian diet?”

2) How the heck can you correlate an IQ score from a 10 year old with that child’s food preference 20 years later as an adult? In other words, the diet they chose as adults somehow retroactively influenced their IQ scores as a child in some James Cameron Terminator sort of way?

3) Does anyone else find it strange that so-called “vegetarians” scored higher, but vegans (the true vegetarians, if you ask me) scored lower than average?

I found this quote the most hilarious:

“Maybe that explains why many meat-reducers are keen to call themselves vegetarians when even they must know that vegetarians don’t eat chicken, turkey or fish!”

Yeah, including the “vegetarians” in your study.

The bottom line: Don’t take the headlines at face value. Read articles critically; several times, if you need to, or ask an expert you trust (*ahem) their opinion on it. Most of all, do your own critical thinking. Hey, it’s your health we’re talking about here. No one’s going to look out for you if you don’t look out for yourself.

…well, that’s not true - I will, no matter how annoying to you I get.