I’m not really sure I want to pit the medical researchers or the news media. Maybe both.
Two days ago I read an article with a headline much like this one: “Eating half the recommended amount of salt per day could increase the risk of heart attacks, scientists warn”
So I thought “Well great, if I eat too much salt I suffer from heart disease, if I eat too little I suffer from heart disease”. Actually I’m not worried about heart disease, at least not at my age. I’m not even sure if the study makes biological sense. Too little salt and too much salt can both cause the same condition? It might actually be possible though, since they’re both messing with the kidneys or red blood cells or … look, I just don’t give a crap. I just can’t be bothered to push the old brain cells to think about it, for the same reason the cells quit when I read or hear other health news advice.
This health advice is nearly impossible to follow anyway. Most people in the First World eat too much salt, but unless you’re home cooking every meal you can’t avoid it. If you do home cook every meal you will still have trouble avoiding it. And now there’s some unsafe lower limit too. Are we supposed to carefully measure the salt intake of every single meal we have, every day, for the rest of our lives? Perhaps we need special salt screening so we know what the upper and lower limits are based on your age, sex, weight, ethnic group, genetic profile, blood type, IQ and astrological sign.
This is far from the first time I’ve read something like this. When the West Nile virus came to Canada, in the summer, we were all told to put on sunblock (to avoid skin cancer) and put on mosquito repellent (to avoid being bitten by infected mosquitoes). Sounds alright so far? When you put on sunblock, it opens your pores, making you more vulnerable to poisons on the skin, such as … mosquito repellent. Following both pieces of advice literally made the situation worse! It took a while for someone to report on this, needless to say. (I’m pretty sure the risk of mosquito repellent poisoning is low. Then again, so was the risk of West Nile!)
It’s this kind of health paranoia that is making food less appealing. I don’t drink milk anymore (health condition, validated by an actual doctor and not a newspaper article) but when I did, I would constantly try and fail to find whole milk. I couldn’t find milk that had cream on top that I used to have as a kid, the closest I could find were skim milk (so no cream, and low fat) or 2% homogenized milk (meaning they took half the cream before mixing it up because they want it to be low fat) because customers aren’t allowed to make their own decisions. I can eat yogurt (I should have some milk products) but not yogurt with fat in it. It’s not because the doctor said I need to lose weight (I’m very skinny, actually, and not in a studly way) but because I literally cannot find any yogurt that is not fat-free at my grocery store. That’s not even an exaggeration, it is literally the truth. I could probably find some if I Google a specialty yogurt store, but not only would that require more travel and money, but I’d have to spend a lot of time avoiding the Greek yogurt fad, and the organic fad, and…
Yes, I called organic food a fad. I see it as a choice, and not always the better one. I can buy reliably pesticide-laden (pesticide is a poison) fruit, or I can buy organic fruit. Most of the time the organic fruit will be healthy, but on occasion it will be infected by insect-borne diseases that harm humans that could have been avoided by spraying it with pesticides. Or just E. coli. So I guess I can choose between slow poison and random spikes of dangerous disease.
There are three major nutrients that we use for energy. I’m not counting vitamins, because while your body uses them, they’re not generally used as a fuel. I’m just talking about fat, sugar and protein.
You don’t want to take in too much fat. It might cause you to … I’m not even sure, exactly. Since apparently fat that’s taken into your digestive system does not directly clog your arteries. The health authorities have been screaming about avoiding fat for decades though, so best to avoid. If you can.
You don’t want to take in too much sugar. You might develop diabetes. All kinds of health problems there. Blindness, amputations, etc. There’s health risks for taking in fake sugar too. You can’t eat fruit, that has sugar in it! Only this sugar won’t give you diabetes because it’s shaped like a hexagon instead of a pentagon. Except you find both types of sugar in fruit. And in natural corn syrup.
You don’t want to take in too much protein. When you break down protein for energy you get ammonia, which is incredibly poisonous. (It’s also quickly turned into the less poisonous urea, but that means you might be exposed to tiny amounts of ammonia for a tiny amount of time. Can’t be having that!) Also there’s a risk of ketosis.
The body can actually transform some nutrients into others, so no matter what you eat, you’re screwed.
So there’s a way to avoid all these problems. Eat nothing at all! Unfortunately that will cause an even more severe health problem that will kill you over the course of a few days. (Maybe a few weeks if you drink a lot of water.)