Are You Listening to Nutritional Advice From a Scientist -- or a Fast Food Clown?
From print and radio to TV and the internet, we're constantly receiving information from nutritional scientists on the eating habits that will improve our health and, in the process, help us spend less on medical bills. Yet when you read or hear some of the commentary on these research reports and articles, you'll find that lots of people object to the "food police" telling us what to eat.
I'm somewhat baffled by this phenomenon. After all, most of the findings have been discovered by scientists during highly methodical, controlled experiments or studies. As a result, scientists have linked the over-consumption of certain foods with diseases that are killing us and causing our nation to needlessly spend billions of dollars on medical care. And while they've made suggestions about the types of food we should be eating -- or avoiding -- nobody has ever advocated the idea that as a nation, we should be forced to eat one food or another. But you'd certainly think that's what's happening when you read the anti-food-police rhetoric.
Hey, back off a bit! The scientists are simply providing information to help you make informed choices.
Maybe what people should be questioning is the information they've been getting from the corporations whose job it is to sell us those foods we've been over-consuming. After all, they've been telling us for years what to eat -- and doing a very persuasive job of it. Clever Chihuahuas and cute clowns convince us to eat fast food, while croaking frogs sell us beer. Cartoon camels and manly cowboys tell us it's OK to smoke. We're made to think that if we consume these companies' products, we'll be hip, cool, smart, funny, clever, sexy, masculine, or feminine.
We buy these corporations' products because they entertain us, not because their products are healthy. These companies use sophisticated marketing techniques to manipulate our consumer choices, and they're a lot sneakier than the scientists when telling us what to eat.
These corporations don't care one hoot about your health or your pocketbook. All they want to do is make a profit from you. They don't care that they're creating a nation of overweight people, with record levels of obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes. They're just happy as long as they meet their profit goals.
But the motivation of the scientists and nutritionists we hear from is merely to help us make healthier choices and save our hard-earned dollars. Who would you rather trust -- scientists, or clowns, dogs, frogs, camels, and cowboys?
Decades ago, the corporate manipulators successfully convinced many Americans to smoke, but eventually, years of painstaking scientific research turned the tide. The sight of friends and relatives dying from smoking-related diseases also contributed significantly to our change of heart about smoking.
I think we're at the beginning of a similar campaign that will eventually turn the tide against unhealthy foods loaded with fats, sugars, sodium, and chemicals that our grandmothers wouldn't even recognize. As with smoking, we'll become convinced when we see friends, relatives, children, and teenagers who are obese, diabetic, and hooked on expensive blood pressure and cholesterol-reducing medicines. It's already happening at alarming rates.
Given the amount of money we're wasting on medical bills and on Medicare, I hope it takes us less time to get the message about nutrition than it did about smoking.
I'm a firm believer in democracy and our freedom of choice, and I'd never want laws or regulations that actually dictate what we must eat. Rather, I prefer that people make informed choices that will help them live long and prosper -- and suffer less along the way.
More on MoneyWatch:
- How Much Would a Heart Attack Cost You?
- New Year's Resolution to Eat Healthy: How to Make it Stick
- How to Spend Less in Retirement
View all articles by Steve Vernon on CBS MoneyWatch»
Steve Vernon helped large employers design and manage their retirement programs for more than 35 years as a consulting actuary. Now he's a research scholar for the Stanford Center on Longevity, where he helps collect, direct and disseminate research that will improve the financial security of seniors. He's also president of Rest-of-Life Communications, delivers retirement planning workshops
and authored Retirement Game-Changers: Strategies for a Healthy, Financially Secure and Fulfilling Long Life and Money for Life: Turn Your IRA and 401(k) Into a Lifetime Retirement Paycheck.
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
