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Brooke

July 31, 2015 -- My favorite podcast, On the Media, yesterday delivered an incisive and scathing look at the way health and diet news is reported in popular media, popping many bubbles of conventional wisdom. Its anchor Brooke Gladstone (this week without her equally brilliant and wry co-anchor Bob Garfield) subtitles this piece, "High colonics, vampire facials, and the magical thinking that fuels an industry."

Ms Gladstone righteously and accurately excoriates, as an example of the irresponsible and sensationalist writing that passes for journalism, an article that proclaims that kale is actually bad for us, describing it as "stunningly unsubstantiated." This is just one article in an endless parade, she tells us, that trumpet the newest food "breakthrough" or "medical miracle" or "first of its kind" or "game changer" or "new standard of care" that will kill us or save us. Other examples are omega-3s, dark chocolate, red wine, cell phone radiation, yo-yo dieting, and don't get her started on gluten.

She cites a genuine expert regarding gluten and the diet craze that now surrounds it. For people who don't have a diagnosed case of celiac disease (i.e. more than 99% of us), clinical trials have found no benefit in avoiding these foods. The popular frenzy that now surrounds supposed gluten-sensitivities is just the latest example of the effectiveness of the pop science press.

She further reports that there is no such thing as a "simple screening test." If a story claims this, run for the hills! Screening test decisions should actually be among the most complex that we face in all of our health care decision-making. What will we do with the results? It is very difficult to ignore a positive, even when the treatment decision that seems inevitable does more harm than good.

She warns us not to confuse -- as many such articles would have us do -- risk factors with actual diseases. The classic example is LDL cholesterol and heart disease. The public has fixated on their serum cholesterol numbers instead of on the numbers that really matter: the rates of death from heart disease. Beware, she further exhorts us, of the representation of normal conditions such as baldness by the "disease-mongerers" as pathologies. In all these cases, the objective is, of course, to drive spending with fear.

Of the numerous myths she debunks, my favorite is the one about drinking eight glasses of water a day. It's just not true. There is no evidence that all this water, as Jennifer Anniston has claimed (in an example of what is termed marketing by celebrity culture) will make your skin glow. Drink water when you're thirsty. That's all you need.

How do these stories come to be? Ms Gladstone interviewed John Bohannon of Science magazine who describes their typical trajectory: launch a study of some popular food or behavior, "...do a bad job with the statistics and the design of the experiment, get a bad paper published, and then build a global multimedia campaign around it... There are diet fads that come like tsunamis every few months. Why have journalists missed this?" Well, Ms Gladstone hasn't and I am grateful for her rare, honest voice.

Here is her Skeptic's Guide to Health News and Diet Fads.

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