this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
232 points (94.6% liked)

World News

38563 readers
2538 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

So maybe the huge worry people had after the news that WHO would classify it as cancerous was a little too much. I think the media could have reported on it in a bit more responsible way.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (32 children)

Not a shock.

Food scares are almost always over blown (except obviously tide pods).

People thought MSG was going to kill everyone. People thought Cholesterol was the key to good health. Even fat in moderation is perfectly fine.

But Fish will kill you with mercury, uncooked pork will kill you with everything (which is unlikely to happen in the first place, but also most pork you get is already cooked, at least sausage and hams). Salmonella is definitely going to kill you. Your kitchen is going to burn down, Fried food will end your life, and all processed food is bad.

Remember Supersize me? Remember the guy who ate two big macs a day for multiple years. That SINGLE guy should have been the end of the entire documentary, because he basically showed "Yes you can eat McDonalds in moderation and have a healthy life." But instead "McDonalds is going to kill you with super sized food."

The fact is you're probably more likely to get Ebola than most of these things actually contributing to your death.. though speaking of disease myths...

These things rush in, kill a business or a company, and then are forgotten, and then 10 years later new science comes out and goes "Btw it wasn't as bad as people thought... try it out"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The constant stupidity around food makes science look really really bad and I bet it's the biggest contributor to people not trusting doctors and climate scientists. Personally I've become something like an antivaxer but with food. If people have been eating it for hundreds of years I trust it regardless of what studies say, and if it's newfangled processed food I don't trust it, also ignoring any study. I can easily see why some people wouldn't differentiate between these alarmist food studies and the much more legitimate areas of science. It's wrong but I understand exactly where they're coming from.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Plus the reporting on it.

At a certain point, people start saying things like "X is supposed to be bad now, but give it 5 years and it'll probably be healthy again!" or "they say you're not supposed to do Y anymore...".

Because, of course, most people get their information from news sources who are always trying to find the next superfood or poison that we've all been consuming for hundreds of years. And often, many of the things were taught when we're younger are no longer considered correct, or at least fully correct, anymore.

So at a point people just get tired, ignore all of it, and just do whatever they were going to do anyway, because from their perspective, scientists can't make their mind up anyway.

load more comments (30 replies)