We should all take those health stories with a pinch of salt

Date Published: {J}

Back in a different lifetime working on the newsdesk of the Irish Daily Star, there was a daily chore to find a health scare story of some sort that was known on the news list as the ‘Coffee can kill you’ yarn.

Once in a while the story actually was something like too much coffee can kill you, but more often it was that meat will give you cancer, followed a few days later by a claim that a vegetarian diet can leave you vulnerable to cancer and that in fact the best preventative measure you can take is to shove as much meat as you can fit, down your neck.

So one week your headline screams ‘meat is murder’ – and a week later it’s ‘meat is the perfect medicine for a long life’.

Occasionally some boffin decided that fruit wasn’t good for you after all; most appreciated among the staff were the medics who suggested a few drinks never did anyone any harm – or the ones who suggested that jogging was in fact bad for your heart.

We were rather cynical about the whole thing – in the same way as, when the horoscopes for a particular day didn’t turn up, we dug out an old set and hoped nobody remembered the original – but people take this sort of stuff seriously.

I’m not talking about in-depth research from acknowledged experts; this is more the headline-grabbing sensational claim that gets more coverage that it should be entitled to.

All of this came flooding back last week when there was something of a mini-frenzy over a claim by a group of German nutritionists – after the obligatory ‘extensive study’ – that chocolate was actually so good for you that it lowered blood pressure and cut the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

It was entirely coincidental that this report came out at the time of year when chocolate sales hit their peak – Easter, with the abundance of chocolate eggs – but the study found that, in a nutshell, those who ate the most chocolate over a decade also got the most benefit.

Two problems in the small print however – this is about having a square of chocolate a day (which is like offering an alcoholic a thimble-full of beer) and the more expensive the chocolate, the better the impact.

Thus you’d need to be like a Yorkie bar – big, rich and thick; a milk chocolate brick – to really make this work.

The study of over 19,000 people, published in the European Heart Journal, found those who ate half a bar a week had lower blood pressure. They also had a 39% lower risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Still, they should have suggested that chocoholics would fare even better if they went for fruit ‘n’ nut, for example, because in addition to keeping the old ticker in time, they’d also be getting one of their five a day.

Most people work on the premise of believing in or around half of what they read – and when it comes to health stories in particular, they should always come with a health warning attached.So take these surveys with a pinch of salt – that is, of course, unless the survey is actually pointing out that salt is no good for your heart.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.