Warnings and Food-FYI

[Guest guest]

Decisions, Decisions: Dealing with All the Food and Health Warnings

http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.813/news_detail.asp

By Ruth Kava, Ph.D., R.D.

Candy Sagon's article in the Washington Post beautifully illuminates the

ultimate shopper's dilemma -- what to eat and on what basis to make that

decision. In a light-hearted essay about the impact of worrisome headlines on

consumers' food choices, Ms. Sagon notes that " choosing what to eat and drink

has become hard work. " Consumers have been warned about pesticides on produce

(and told to eat organic as a result), antibiotics and hormones in meat and milk

(and told to eat " natural " or " free-range, " whatever that means), and the

importance of eating fatty fish for the omega-3 fatty acids (but also told not

to eat fatty fish because of the mercury and/or PCBs). Sometimes it seems that

the most practical response might be fasting.

What Ms. Sagon doesn't note is that much of the impetus behind many of these

warnings is derived from self-styled activist groups, whose many health-related

warnings do little except confuse people and make choices more difficult than

they really should be.

Ruth Kava, Ph.D., R.D., is Director of Nutrition at the American Council on

Science and Health (ACSH.org, HealthFactsAndFears.com).

By Candy Sagon

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, July 19, 2006; Page F01

I can't decide what to eat. I don't mean which recipe to make, or what

restaurant to go to. I mean when I go grocery shopping, I'm paralyzed with

indecision. Everything, it seems, is either ethically, nutritionally or

environmentally incorrect. Guilt is ruining my appetite.

Take the other day when I went to buy eggs. Sounds easy, but this is the

dialogue that played in my head as I stared at six shelves of egg cartons:

" Should I buy the omega-3 eggs that are supposedly good for my heart? But wait,

they're not organic. Maybe I should spring for the $3.50 organic eggs from

Horizon, even though I read that the company has gotten so huge, it's driving

out the smaller organic farmers. Perhaps I should get the cage-free eggs from a

small farm in Pennsylvania? Or the brown eggs from vegetarian-fed, free-roaming

hens?

" Oh, never mind. I need to save money. So what if the hens are living a

miserable existence in the poultry version of the state pen. The eggs are only

79 cents. I have bills to pay. "

(Note to PETA: Don't worry. I couldn't live with the guilt. I ended up buying

the brown eggs from free-roaming happy hens, so don't write to me.)

The point is, choosing what to eat and drink has become hard work. It's not

simply a case of taste or price. Now we have to ask ourselves: Is this good for

my health? Have animals suffered? Is it local? Organic? Bad for the planet?

Harvested by child workers?

What's worse, the answers are often contradictory. Should I buy the locally

grown lettuce at the farmers market, even if the farmer uses some pesticides?

It's good to support local farmers, but what about pesticides' link to cancer?

Then again, that California-grown organic lettuce at the supermarket has been

trucked in thousands of miles, burning up thousands of gallons of fuel. Does

that make environmental sense?

Even when you think you know the answers, it turns out you don't. Consider

salmon. To prevent the over-fishing of wild salmon, which was also wildly

expensive, farm-raised salmon was developed. It seemed the perfect solution to

controlling cost, protecting the species and meeting the exploding consumer

demand for the kind of fish that health experts insisted we needed to eat.

Except that now farm-raised salmon is said to have high levels of chemical

contaminants and other carcinogens because of the way the salmon are raised.

Should we limit our intake? Switch to something else? (But not Chilean sea bass,

which is over-fished, or shrimp, which is farm-raised in equally contaminated

water in foreign countries, or canned tuna, which is full of mercury.) Or should

we just take the risk because we're told -- this week -- that fish oil is good

for us?

The tough decisions aren't limited to the fish counter. Books such as

Schlosser's " Fast Food Nation " (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) have raised questions

about the humane treatment of cattle and of the immigrants working in packing

plants. Critics wonder how closely the federal government really inspects the

meat we eat. The feds say our meat supply is safe, but companies aren't required

to announce recalls of contaminated beef. And what about that Texas cow

discovered last year to be infected with mad cow, the brain-wasting disease?

Government officials played it down; should we trust them? Switch to chicken?

Oh, wait. Avian flu. Salmonella. Chickens raised in factory farms. Manure runoff

polluting the Chesapeake Bay. Chicken-of-the-sea becoming literally true.

I think I need to lie down.

My anxiety over what to eat is what Pollan addresses in " The Omnivore's

Dilemma " (Penguin Press, 2006). The question of what to have for dinner has

become complicated, he acknowledges. Fast food and processed food are making us

fat. Dietary advice is confusing. Even organic is becoming big business,

including organic junk food and organic factory farms.

But refusing to consider these developments is not the answer. Ignorance, he

argues, is not bliss. It's just ignorance. " To eat with a full consciousness of

all that is at stake " can afford great satisfaction, Pollan writes, because it

lets you choose what is best for you. Bottom line for him in the dinner dilemma:

Choose local.

Still, I wondered if there might be some moral and ethical template I could

apply to my food decisions. Arthur Caplan is the director of the Center for

Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. He's usually asked about tough

subjects such as stem-cell research and human cloning. I asked if he found moral

predicaments at the grocery store.

" Oh, absolutely. And it doesn't even end with the food, " he says. " One of my

great moral quandaries comes when the cashier asks, 'Paper or plastic?' " (For

the record, he chooses paper.)

Caplan believes there's no need to have " a moral aneurysm " every time we go to

the supermarket. Every person, he says, needs to establish a scale of ethical

priorities. Is taste most important to you? Cost? The environment? Your health?

Animal suffering? Pick one thing that matters most and let that drive your

decisions.

For Caplan, No. 1 on his list is whether suffering was involved. " So I want

happy chickens, no veal, no foie gras. After that comes environmental impact,

and then labor. I have an ethical guide in my head that helps me through the

store. "

He also points out that, in a way, we should be grateful we are even considering

all these ethical questions. " These are the dilemmas of abundance, " he says. " If

we were living in Darfur, the only answer to 'what to eat?' would be 'anything I

can find.' "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/18/AR2006071800309.\

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Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true. "

--Francis Bacon,

English philosopher and scientist