Oversimplification, combined with speculation, is what sells and captures your attention
Media tend to tell people that specific food groups or compounds are to blame for major health issues. Like for instance when fat were to blame for weight gain, and suddenly you could find low fat versions of everything on every shelf. This is the short version of what happened after that:
This is a correlation and correlation does not necessary mean causation (read more about that later). As you can see though, the obesity rate started raising after the low fat guidelines came out – opposite of what was the intention. Did the war on fat make us fat? I’m not gonna go into details about why that might have happened now, because it is very complex. The point is that taking one specific matter and using it to explain complex issues, such as becoming or being overweight, obese, having diabetes, heart disease or cancer, etc., is a huge oversimplification. If it were only one solution to a problem like this, the problem would not really exist.
On the other hand, insulin has also received a lot of the blame for obesity in many newspapers and books, which made low carb diets a growing field (also as a counter reaction towards the low fat period). They actually can give short-term results, but the long-term results tend to be different. People following low carb diets lose more weight short-term, but tend to regain this weight two years later – often even more than they weighted to begin with. Excluding a whole nutrient source from your diet is a pretty big step, and many people can’t follow through with it. Why would you do something that you in the long run won’t be able to keep up with? This doesn’t mean that low carb can never work – I do believe low carb has it’s place too. It all depends on the individual and the context. There is no “one size fits all”. Some people need more carbohydrates in their diets, while other people need more fat.
Other examples of what I mean by oversimplification:
“Losing weight is simple! Just eat fewer calories – not more than you burn!”
“Sugar is to blame for cancer.”
“Gluten makes you sick.”
“Detox to get more energy and finally shred those extra kilos.”
“Eat clean food to lose weight and stay healthy.”
The last one is one of my favourites, and very much used in the fitness industry. What is “clean food”? People throw around words, statements and sentences without defining them – then everyone walks around with each their reality, and often people don’t even talk about the same thing – yet they use the same words (and argue about it …).
Blaming or making scandals keeps the newspapers running, and gives people something to read and crave more of. Media know just how to push the right emotional buttons to keep our attention. But it can also make you trapped in a yoyo-cycle, by for instance leading you towards depriving yourself of food for period of times in order to lose weight, followed by a binge when your body and mind can’t take it anymore. The diet industry takes advantage of our seeking for quickfixes to complex challenges. It’s like treating symptoms, but never really fixing the real problem underneath.
Sometimes it sounds like everyone is an expert on diet and nutrition. It’s something everyone can relate to, and someone that presents themselves as an expert will often be believed to be so. It’s different within fields as architecture or law – here everyone needs a degree to be listened to. But within the field of nutrition it seems this is not a requirement. There are many people with good intentions, but the truth is that many gurus out there are scams; they care about making money, and they are spreading a lot of misinformation based on pseudoscience.
A skeptical mindset is very important, and can keep you from wasting both your money and your time on products and ideas that simply doesn’t work. Bulletproof Coffee is an example of this, and I know many people spend lots of money on it. Bulletproof is a coffee brand stating that there is mycotoxins in regular coffee that can harm your kidneys, and that the Bulletproof is free of these scary toxins. However, mycotoxins are practically nonexistent in commercially available coffee (resources at the bottom of this text), so Bulletproof’s statements are not true. It’s a really good marketing job though, and high priced products. But I would advise you to buy your regular coffee instead.
I think it’s important to inform about low-quality information. It is painful to see how confusing statements are sending you in opposite directions from one week to another. Maybe all this confusion and excess information is simply worsening the health problems in today’s society. Making us more obsessed with food and searching for easy solutions, proof that aren’t really there because context matters more than single factors and a lack of good sources available.
- Levi C. Mycotoxins in coffee. J Assoc Off Anal Chem. 1980 Nov;63(6):1282-5. [PubMed]
- VD Stegen G, Jörissen U, Pittet A, Saccon M, Steiner W, Vincenzi M, Winkler M, Zapp J, Schlatter C. Screening of European coffee final products for occurrence of ochratoxin A (OTA). Food Addit Contam. 1997 Apr;14(3):211-6. [PubMed]
