Page 13 - April 2022 Barbecue News Magazine

• People of a certain age remember when butter was bad and margarine good. Now we know they both pack the same amount of calories and some of the fats in margarine may be worse than butter.
• Since the 1970s the American Heart Association has warned us that eating eggs would increase our risk of heart disease. In 2006 they lifted their ban and two large studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Associa- tion and BMJ say that consuming 5 to 6 eggs a week did not raise the risk of heart disease or stroke in healthy adults.
• Likewise, millions of people are running around thinking that grilling causes cancer because of one research paper. But they never read the followup research that said, pretty much, just don’t burn your food and you’ll be OK.
Also, beware of single-study syndrome. Often one experi- ment is not enough to prove a point. The gold standard measurement to establish a scientific fact is to have multi- ple studies by different teams that produce the same data.
Another crucial message: Just because we have made a study of something doesn’t mean we have studied it.
Dietitians and nutritionists, supposedly experts on what is healthy and what is not, seem to have trouble agreeing on what is healthy and what is not. The New York Times in 2016 surveyed hundreds of members of the American Soci- ety for Nutrition about what they thought was healthy. On many foods the “experts” could not agree. For example, 53% said granola was not healthy, 39% said popcorn wasn’t healthy, and 41% said a pork chop was not healthy. So just how reliable is their advice?
So what’s a person to do? Love food! Don’t fear it! Take what you hear from the media, from your friends, and espe- cially from the internet, with, ahem, a grain of salt. Keep
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your BS meter turned on high. You doctor is not infallible, but she knows better than Facebook. Select your food care- fully, but don’t give yourself an ulcer worrying about it.
If you live to 79, the average life US expectancy, you will eat 86,505 meals. It is really doubtful that a few hot dogs or even a few bags of Cheetos will dent that. Just don’t make them mainstays of your diet.
All my reading and studying has led me to conclude this: Mom was probably right. Eat a balanced diet and every- thing in moderation. Michael Pollan, a writer who has stud- ied food in depth has famously said “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants” was probably right.
We all want a long, healthy life, but life should not be an ascetic journey of denial of pleasure so that we can arrive at the end with a perfect body. I plan to watch my diet and take everything in sensible proportion, but deny myself of no opportunity for great pleasure because of some research paper that will be invalidated in a year. As Dr. David Katz, the founding director of Yale University’s Prevention Re- search Center has said “The cold hard truth is that the only way to eat well is to eat well.”
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