Search for \'Nutrition for a Healthy Body\'

Search for 'Nutrition for a Healthy Body' could lead to Analysis Paralysis!

There has been a lot of social attention on 'right nutrition' in recent years, leading to experimenting in different types of foods including herbal preparations. While I have no doubt that such heightened social consciousness and continued scientific investigation will ultimately benefit humankind, right now one can't help feeling that too much information can be self-defeating. Why or how am I saying this? Ah! Herein lies a story. You see, the spotlight on 'healthy living' had initially led me to doubt as to whether I knew enough about nutrition.

So, I decided to embark on a quest for more information on healthier nutrition and living. I did my research on the web, where I found approximately 221,000 results to my query. Never one to back away from a task that I set my mind on, I sallied forth and began working my way through each and every document, even though I was beginning to feel overwhelmed, bewildered and lost in the absolute maze of information available.

The feeling was further accentuated after I read several contradictory articles, till I finally reached the conclusion that perhaps too much information could actually end up defeating the purpose.

Allow me to give you the example of an article on "Tea may help protect against heart disease, cancer and osteoporosis" (healthy eating club newsletter, June 2002). It begins by talking about several do-good benefits of tea (" can reduce the risk of death after a heart attack by 44%,") but proceeds to contradict itself at the end ("A Californian study found no effect of tea on cardiovascular risk"; "Tea drinking was positively associated with increased coronary risk in a Welsh population")?

I could give you example after example but perhaps just one more will suffice which had served as a real eye opener for me personally. I had always believed that organic food was safer since it was free from the hazards of pesticides till I came across an article in "Safe and Sound." Imagine my horror when I read:

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control confirmed 2,471 cases of people infected with the 0157:H7 E. coli strain in 1996... Interestingly, organic foods made up barely 1% of the U.S. food supply, but were implicated in at least 85 of the confirmed cases...Organic food producers don't use chemical washes and disinfectants to prepare their produce for market. (Resource web site, November-December 1998)