When I was a kid, some friends put salt on their watermelon. I tried it, liked it, and still eat watermelon that way.
When I discovered how delicious salted watermelon was, I tried apples with salt. And oranges. And peaches. And grapes. And tomatoes. If it was a fruit, I salted it.
Health officials warned about the dangers of too much salt, but I figured there are worse things to die from and continued my salty ways.
There was a time when we were warned about the dangers of eating eggs. I like eggs and refused to stop. A few years later, lo and behold, it was considered safe to eat eggs. Ha.
I am not a healthcare professional, and you would do well to ignore what I say, but it’s difficult for me to take dietary studies seriously. Often, it’s impossible to tell who sponsored the research, which makes it difficult to judge if a study is unbiased.
News writers, in many cases, don’t read original studies, but simply repeat what others said about them. Sometimes it is difficult to find original studies. Often they are hidden behind a paywall somewhere. So, news reports about health issues relating to diet are often second, third, or even fourth hand.
This doesn’t concern diet, but here’s an example of the problem with news reports. In 2009, news sources were awash with concerns about a sharp rise in active duty personnel killing themselves. Don’t get me wrong, as a combat veteran, I am strongly in favor of resources to improve the mental health of those on active duty, as well as vets. But I had a heck of a time finding the original report that all the news sources were referencing. When I finally found it, guess what? The suicide rate among active duty personnel was no higher than among the civilian population. Yes, there was a rise in military suicides, but it corresponded to a similar rise among civilians. No news reports mentioned either of those facts.
Unless I can read and understand a study—sometimes they are so badly written it’s hard to sort out what was done and what the results were—I ignore reports about it.
Here is a current example. All over the news is information about the importance of when you eat. Eating later in the day, it is said, leaves you feeling more hungry than eating earlier. Okay.
Found the study. It’s called, “Timing of daily calorie loading affects appetite and hunger responses without changes in energy metabolism in healthy subjects with obesity.” With a title that long, I expected the report itself to be a challenge to read. It was. And buried in the jargon was this fact: the findings were based on 30 people who were studied for two four-week periods.
Though interesting, an evaluation of 30 people for eight weeks is not a major study. Am I adjusting my eating schedule due to this report? No.
This is National Apple Month, and I just enjoyed a Honeycrisp, liberally salted. In the evening.
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