Proper Eating Habits Can Be Confusing

The phones were ringing off the hook a few weeks ago at the offices of the Wellness Letter of the University of California, Berkeley, a health and nutrition newsletter.

The results of a new study on the effects of beta carotene were published in a medical journal and subsequent news accounts, and callers wanted to know whether carrots were bad for them.

“People don’t read far enough,” said Wellness Letter Managing Editor Dale Ogar. “It wasn’t about carrots; it was about beta carotene. And it was about smokers.

“But confusion is job security for me. I’d be out of a job if not for the New England Journal of Medicine.”

The beta carotene flap was particularly nettlesome. Ogar’s newsletter had taken the rare move of endorsing beta carotene and vitamin E supplements a year ago, because early studies had suggested the substances could protect people against cancer.

In January, however, a National Cancer Institute study of heavy smokers was abruptly halted after preliminary findings showed a 17 percent increase in lung cancer deaths among those who had taken 30 milligrams of beta carotene a day.

Ironically, people are finding that the more information they get about nutrition, the less they know. Conflicting studies, changing recommendations, perplexing charts and formulas are turning even the most earnest health-minded consumers into disbelievers. People are beginning to suspect that no one knows what they’re talking about.

A September 1995 study by the American Dietetic Association showed 49 percent of consumers are confused about nutritional news reports, mainly because of conflicting and inconsistent information.

Only 35 percent said they are doing all they can to eat a balanced diet, down from 44 percent in 1991 and 39 percent in 1993.

“This is your life and your health. The individual has a responsibility to be educated,” said Judith Stern, a nutritionist at the University of California, Davis. But, she admitted, “It’s so bloody complicated.”

Oat bran, the “right thing to do” in the ‘80s, was toppled from its pedestal in the early ‘90s but is making a comeback. Garlic, touted as a cure-all for years in alternative-health ads dismissed by establishment nutritionists, now appears to be so promising a cancer fighter that the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City has set up a clinic to study it.

After years of being told to avoid eggs, new evidence indicates some people can eat them with impunity. And several recent studies suggest margarine may be as harmful as butter and that people should opt instead for foods using canola or olive oil.

“We’re all seeing confusion, if not total nihilism,” said Mona Sutnick, a nutritionist and spokeswoman for the dietetic association. “There’s a feeling that we should just drown it all in Haagen Dazs.”

Results of single studies are not intended to trigger changes in consumer habits, nutritionists caution.

“The latest study is not the latest advice,” said Larry Lindner, executive editor of the Tufts University Nutrition Newsletter. “It is the latest research news. It should not be immediately translated into what should be going into your shopping cart or your kitchen.”

Science progresses in a two-steps-forward-one-step-backward manner, Lindner said, until a trend can be firmly established and public recommendations can be made.

Or, as the Wellness Letter put it: “Just because a study is reported on TV or on the front page, that doesn’t mean it applies to you.”

Karen Miller-Kovach, spokeswoman for Weight Watchers International in Jericho, N.Y., has a rule of thumb for determining the usefulness of nutrition news.

Read, or listen, carefully to find out the source of the information. Is it a single study, a review of all the studies on a particular subject, or a group of experts making a recommendation? “In that order, that’s how much you should listen to it,” she said.

A new study reported in, say, the New England Journal of Medicine, should “barely register on your ‘think meter,”’ said Miller-Kovach. “If it’s a review of studies, you should think about it and about changing your habits.

“If it’s a National Institutes of Health consensus recommendation, you definitely listen to it and think about changing your life on the basis of what they say.”