Today’s lunchtime reading of the papers has highlighted a few stories about how things you like may be bad for you:
- An article in the NY Times bemoans the amount of drinking by underage teens in the latest Harry Potter movie. The author seems to believe that by showing Harry and his friends getting “Liquid Courage”, then other children will feel it is OK to drink to excess. Yet again we have a situation where parents believe young adults are not smart enough to separate fantasy from reality.
- An article in the LA Times notes that tanning beds are as carcinogenic as asbestos and cigarettes. Specifically, the study found that the risk of skin cancer increases 75% when people start using tanning beds before age 30. They also found that all types of ultraviolet radiation caused tumors, not just UV-B. Part of this could be manipulation of statistics, and part of this could just be that people seem to believe that if a little is good, a lot is better.
- An article in CNN notes how juices, tea, and energy drinks may erode your teeth. Do they want us to go back to water? But read further, and you discover “Dentists acknowledge that the methodology of the erosion studies have flaws. The teeth were soaked in beverages because it’s impossible to re-create the human mouth in a laboratory. And the experiments do not take into consideration the natural defense humans have against acid — their saliva.”
So what is the moral of these articles, boys and girls. If a little is good, then excess (even if it is the American Way™) is not necessarily better.
