British 'newspapers' are particularly notorious for decreeing pretty much every food source is putting you at risk of death. In particular many of you I'm sure will have heard the Daily Mail cancer song, and if not here it is:
This is the article, which I'll be taking about, it's probably worth reading, but if you don't fancy taking the time to do so, I can summarize into two bullet points:
- Bacon increases your chances of getting cancer by over 20%
- Eat bacon, and you will die.
WE'RE NOT ALLOWED TO EAT BACON?!
When you read the article through you panic. It's based on a study by The World Cancer Research Fund - that sounds like a credible source doesn't it?
After you've finished hyperventilating over the fact that this God given food source may result in death, and after you've contemplating whether a life without bacon, is a life worth living, the analytical and sceptical part of your mind might kick in. You've been eating bacon all your life, and so do most of the other people you know too. Most of them wont have got cancer - something fishy is going on here.
Now newspapers never outright lie about something. However they do very often misinterpret data. This right here is a massive case of misinterpretation. The article is correct in the sense, that yes, eating processed meats does increase your risk of getting cancer by 21%. But, here comes the important part - we need to find out what the initial risk of getting cancer is in the first place. A little bit of research, will lead you to find the initial risk of getting colorectal cancer (the one the study is based around) is 5 out of 100. A 21% increase gives us 6 out of 100 people. Or put another way, if 100 people eat bacon every day, 1 more will develop this form of cancer, so it makes absolutely no difference to 99 out of 100 people. It doesn't seem quite so scary now does it?
It's okay though, you'll probably think most people know not to take newspapers too seriously. The problem is, many people in fact do. I'm not sure how many of you will have heard about the MMR problems we had and our currently have in the UK, but I'll quickly explain. In 1998, a very poorly conducted study linking autism to the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccination, was reported in the press. It caused unprecedented widespread panic, and so many children weren't given this incredibly important jab. Now I wont go into too much detail about how vaccinations work, but there is a critical percentage of the population which needs to be vaccinated in order to prevent an outbreak. This percentage wasn't met, and as a result, many children have, and will still in the future feel the effects of this life changing illness, or die needlessly.
So who is to blame? Well, the study was a load of rubbish to begin with, so obviously they are partially responsible. However the media, did not check the credibility of the information, and this was what resulted in the panic. So the media is just as dangerous as the threats which they publish.
The moral of this story - don't believe what you read in the newspapers, and get someone who knows what they're talking about to check things out.
This post is a little heavy going, so feel free to ask me any questions if there's anything you don't understand, or want to know more about.
To lighten the mood, here's a picture of my honorary niece (boyfriend's sister's daughter), at only a few hours old:
Needless to say, I'm going to be a doting Auntie!
DFTBA x
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