Where do you go first to get medical advice? To your doctor? Your pharmacist? Or do you do what many Americans do and go straight to the Internet?
Describe to a search engine any health problem in English, and you’ll see that health advice is some of the most sought-after information there is. Mixed in among the writings of established medical authorities, however, are a slew of medical-advice websites that exist only to earn ad revenue. Their professional credentials, if any, are slim. Beyond those lies a realm of random blog posts and forum comments in which opinion carries the same weight as fact.
This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. The bookstores are filled with works promoting this diet or that diet, written by pretty much any schmo at all. Sometimes simply writing such a book entitles a person to call himself a “nutritionist”, not the other way around.
What book authors aren’t doing, though, is writing reference works. Internet users joke about the accuracy of online information, but at the same time, many see the Web as a giant encyclopedia.
Should we drink milk?
An article in the July 7 New York Times made clear just how difficult it is to separate medical fact from speculation. The text, written by NYT food columnist Mark Bittman and labeled as opinion, questions the emphasis on milk in the American diet.
Bittman contrasts the powerful dairy lobby, which for decades influenced American thinking through billboards, magazine ads and TV commercials (such as the one above), with 50 million Americans who are lactose-intolerant, who have a milk allergy or who have other difficulties digesting milk. He then describes his own experience of life-long stomach problems that disappeared when he stopped drinking milk.
In three days, Bittman’s article has received nearly 800 comments. One group of readers congratulates Bittman for finally pointing out that milk does cause problems for lots of people. A second group chastises the author for generalizing his own health problem. And a third group offers a variety of interesting, contradictory and unsubstantiated theories about milk.
The readers claim, for example: we drink cows’ milk only because the dairy lobby tells us to; pasteurized milk is not nutritious, because enzymes and vitamins have been destroyed; pasteurized milk is very nutritious, because calcium and Vitamin D are added to American milk; raw milk is the way to go; low-fat milk causes people to gain weight; cows are kept in factory-like conditions; cows are treated humanely; cows are forced to keep bearing calves, which are sold as veal, in order to keep producing milk; soy milk (a common alternative to cows’ milk) is very healthy; soy milk is harmful; like milk, wheat (the cause of gluten intolerance) should be avoided; and so on.
The readers, who include a number of doctors, agree on only one thing: that Americans need to eat a lot more vegetables, and a lot less of everything else.
What’s good and what’s bad?
Our media report every study as though it’s definitive — and often underplay the fact that a lot of studies are done by the food industry. Thus, for most of our lives, the news has alternated: milk is good for you; milk is bad for you; red meat is good for you; red meat is bad for you; eggs are good for you; eggs are bad for you; wine is good for you; wine is bad for you; white bread is good for you; white bread is bad for you. Is your favorite food under attack? Just give it a few years and the diagnosis will change by 180 degrees.
I personally side with Bittman on this one. Different cultures have evolved to eat different foods. Northern Europeans are the only people who, as adults, still have the gut bacteria necessary to digest lactose. Among humanity, lactose tolerance is the exception. Given that America is a genetic microcosm of the whole world, it’s not possible to say that one size fits all or one diet fits all. Pay attention to your body: if something gives you a stomach ache or makes you gain weight, don’t eat it. It’s that simple.
