Opinion & Commentary
Tofu terror added to list of reasons to be fearful
This has been a good week for hypochondriacs. Two new reports have been published warning that behaviour we thought safe or even beneficial poses deadly risks to our health.
The first report pointed to a possible link between soy and cancer risk. This sent shivers down the spines of all those who thought they had avoided the threat of heart attacks by swapping cows' milk for soy milk and McDonald's for tofu burgers. It seems that if the animal fat doesn't give you a coronary, the soya beans will give you cancer.
The warning came from the NSW Cancer Council, which suggested that "too much soy" might increase the risk of breast and prostate cancer.
We thought soy was a wonder product that explained how all those Japanese lived to be a hundred. That's why health food shops and supermarkets in the trendier parts of town have been doing such good business selling soy sausages, tofu burgers and soy supplements to food faddists looking to buy longevity with a handful of beans.
But now we are told soy is a risk factor. At least it's an equal opportunities risk factor: breast cancer for the girls, prostate cancer for the boys.
No sooner had we cleared our fridges of all that wobbly tofu than up pops another report turning another piece of conventional health advice on its head. This time it was researchers from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research worrying that people may not be getting enough sunlight to produce vitamin D.
Where does this leave slip, slap, slop? If there's a danger of insufficient exposure to sunlight, what are we to make of those TV advertisements "financed by the Commonwealth Government, Canberra" telling us to cover up like a Sunni fundamentalist widow in mourning before venturing out into the daylight?
It seems we are in danger of not getting enough exposure to the sun, but experts cannot agree what the norm should be. They think you'll be safe in Brisbane if you get just 10 minutes exposure three times a week, but if you're in Melbourne in the winter you might struggle to get the recommended three weekly doses of 51 minutes each.
It's a real worry because if you fall short of Vitamin D, your bones start to disintegrate. Not only that but (you guessed it) you will be at heightened risk of several different kinds of cancer.
"Experts" have an interest in inundating us with scare reports like these because it gets them noticed.
If you're an academic researcher seeking promotion, or head of an organisation wanting to draw attention to itself, you won't get far issuing dull press releases confirming what dozens of others have said before you.
But fly in the face of the prevailing consensus and you'll soon get your name in the papers and your face on television. If you're really clever, you might get several bites at the cherry by issuing later corrections to your own earlier statements, thereby prolonging the controversy.
After issuing its warning about soy products, for example, the NSW Cancer Council followed up a few days later advising that soy food can be beneficial after all. The council's nutritionist explained: "Soy foods can be part of [a healthy diet], but a diet stops being healthy when that's the only thing that you're consuming."
So those of you who have been living on soy milk for breakfast, toasted tofu for lunch and stir-fried tempeh for dinner had better watch out. For everyone else, it's as you were.
Why do we pay these scare stories so much attention? The sociologist Frank Furedi says it's because we are nowadays encouraged to think of ourselves as weak and vulnerable rather than strong and in control of our lives.
We want risk-free lives, and we think politicians and experts can organise this for us. We don't want to accept responsibility for our decisions. Like children, we prefer others to tell us what to do.
Our parents and grandparents went off to fight Hitler. Sixty years later we are scared of soya beans and sunlight. We are also scared of obesity, binge drinking, bird flu, global warming, second-hand smoke, child abuse, addictive gambling, the threat of terrorism, crime, nuclear power, long working hours, just to mention a few other recent media panics.
The more we run scared from our own shadows, the more scope there is for experts and politicians to tell us how to organise our lives.
At least this week's advice makes sense. The experts apparently now want us to eat meat out in the sunshine.
No worries. That's what most Australians have been doing every summer for years.
Peter Saunders is the social research director at The Centre for Independent Studies.
