These Diet Stories Are Killing Us

It sure is tough being an American food consumer these days. We may be in greater danger of information overload than overeating. Today’s in-demand miracle food is tomorrow’s discount sale item. What next?

Well, now some experts are trying to tell us that there’s “nothing special” about oat bran. We think that it’s pretty special to have five boxes of the stuff in the kitchen cupboard. But now the respected New England Journal of Medicine is out with a new study that challenges whether oat bran has any more specific value in lowering cholesterol than other fibers, like wheat.

But don’t throw out your oat bran yet. Skeptics of this study say we need to be sure the new conclusions about oats would apply to those with high blood cholesterol. So we need even more cholesterol studies.

They may not prove as helpful to our health as to the wealth of dietetics researchers.

And speaking of cholesterol, the study was talking about bad, not good, cholesterol. That’s right, after years of hearing about cholesterol only in a bad context, the public now knows that there is the good kind, called serum HDL cholesterol. The code name for high density lipoprotein, HDL is supposed to significantly improve cardiovascular health. And guess what can boost the level of HDL in the bloodstream? Eight ounces of wine a day, according to several medical studies. Yes, too much alcohol is bad, but if you are otherwise healthy and not pregnant, a little each day is supposed to be beneficial with a meal. Or so some tell us.

And given today’s health consciousness, that meal is more likely to include fish, right? That’s fine, except that since the government doesn’t require inspection of seafood, some worry that a diet full of fish could include some chemicals and bacteria we didn’t count on.

Ah, well. There is a strong temptation to return to the simple admonitions of childhood to eat from the basic food groups (remember the long chart that used to hang in the school nurse’s office?) and take everything else with a grain of salt.

But we obviously can’t do that until we see the next major medical study on salt.