What "authority" are you going to believe?

It seems that no matter where I look, I am finding some self proclaimed authority making some bold claim about how something I am doing is either good for me, or not. For example, chocolate has been reviled as being something of less than dubious value which should be avoided at all costs and also touted as being an anti-oxidant--a cancer fighting food! There are people who swear that drinking about a quarter cup of vinegar per day (yuck) will cure a wide array of what ever it is that ails us. Others say that is just an old wives tail, and that drinking that much vinegar daily will actually begin to remove the enamel from your teeth, so you better not do it. Who shall we believe?

Another example is that for years doctors said that cigarette smoking was addicting because of the nicotine, and yet studies done by the tobacco industry claimed otherwise. Then it was discovered that the tobacco industry was making sure to maintain a certain level of nicotine in all their cigarettes--so now nearly everybody agrees that smoking is addicting. And yet I found in a book written about 100 years ago in which one of the suggested medical treatments for asthma was smoking cigarettes! No kidding. Supposed to strengthen the lungs and all that.

Some authorities say that eggs are a sort of wonder food just loaded with protein and nutrition--sort of like a whole meal in a neat little ovoid package. Others say no, eggs are really loaded with high levels of cholesterol, and should be avoided. Then there is the debate over whether cholesterol itself is "good" or "bad." My father was a medical doctor and it was his contention that the human body needed some oil just to keep the joints lubricated. Some cholesterol in his opinion was good, a whole lot was bad. Then the question is how much is good, how much is bad.

There are supposedly "good" fats and "bad" fats and it depends on who you listen to which ones are good and which ones are bad.

And if you start looking at food supplements--every one of them claims it is the best one for you, and you absolutely should not even consider going another day without taking that suppliment. They can't all be the best, can they? I mean--isn't at least one suppliment somewhere slightly inferior to another?

And then look at all the advertisements for vitamin pills. Apparently we desperately need a whole slew of vitamins just to keep ourselves alive. And each vitamin company says that their vitamin pill is the ultimate best for you, so you need to take THEIR pill. I once knew an elderly lady named Janet that must have made some companies someplace very happy with her orders for their products. Nearly every day a truck would pull up to her house delivering the latest vitamin or food supplement. Her kitchen cabinet looked like a miniature pharmacy, or health food store. She must have been ingesting 50-60 different pills every day!! She wasn't taking any chances--just taking them ALL.

When I was just a young boy (a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away) I once took a couple of vitamin pills on an empty stomach. Don't do that. I vomited them up shortly. So they didn't do me a whole lot of good that time.

So which "authority" are you going to believe? Some so called authorities seem to have a hidden agenda, like trying to sell you on buying their particular potion or pill. To me these authorities are slightly suspect. I guess the authorities I most believe are the ones that tend to affirm what I already believe. Hmmmm. Does that mean I am biased? Yes it does! I tend to believe that chocolate is GOOD for you because I LIKE chocolate. And I think that deep down, most people are biased this way. So chocolate is good for you and eggs are good, and whatever else I want to eat must be good too. Right? Not necessarily.

The authorities I find most credible are researchers who have done large studies on huge groups of people. I think that their findings tend to be more valid than say a researcher who is sponsored by some pharmaceutical company. The researcher working for and being paid by some company had better find some way to validate the claims of the sponsoring company regarding whatever he is researching, or he likely will be fired. And who wants to be fired! So these researchers tend to hide or overlook data that doesn't support their preconceived (and needed) agenda. They may run the same test a hundred times on a thousand different groups of people and then hand pick the few times where the resulting data seems to indicate whatever they are trying to prove. In other words, they are statistically lying to keep their jobs.

But I think that if you closely examine people, nearly everyone does that. I know people who smoke who totally ignore the warning the surgeon general has compelled the tobacco companies to put on their boxes of cigarettes. That warning is obviously not for them!!

I once entered the house of a lady who was almost blue with lack of oxygen in her blood. She was smoking a cigarette and complaining that she just couldn't get her breath. "It must be the flu or something" she declared. When I asked her about the cigarette in her hand possibly being the cause of her shortness of breath she was adamant. "No, it can't be the cigarette. Why I have smoked them for years. It must be something else." Then she literally passed out and we took her to the hospital where she subsequently died in less than a week. And then she stopped smoking cigarettes.

None are so blind as those who refuse to see.

So what authority are you going to put your faith in?

David