Sunday, February 8, 2009

And We Wonder Why We're Obese!

I will never ever suggest to you that being healthy is something you can do in just a few short minutes a week!

Why?

Because it's just not true!

Unfortunately, there are loads of people who in an effort to get you to read their material, will tell you pretty much anything you want to hear! They will manipulate and twist the truth to make it suit their intended outcome whether it be just to get you to read their article or maybe to get you to buy their products and services.

Take a recent headline for an article on Reuters.com:

"Want to get healthy? Exercise 7 minutes a week"

Come on!

Now I'm sure the author will say if you read the whole article you will have enough information to make an educated decision about what was presented to you. And if you read the whole thing you will, as long as you fully understand that they are specifically talking about improving your bodies ability to utilize insulin.

Again unfortunately, most of us don't read complete and boring articles about studies... we read headlines!

No, it is not the authors' fault if you see their headline and don't read the article, but any writer worth their salt knows that we have so much information (about 2 billion bits per second) thrown at us that we make lots of quick assumption about what we read.

And maybe I am wrong about the writers' intentions. Perhaps they really felt that telling people about a study which monitored 16, early twenties, young men for an astonishing 2 weeks, while they worked out vigorously for 30 seconds twice a day, thereby improving their body's ability to utilize insulin, was vital information and therefore merited utilizing whatever method is possible; including a deceptive headline, to get people to read.

I say that is, pardon me: crap!

Nearly two thirds of Americans are overweight! This is not bad... its horrifying! We are a nation of quick-fixers. We want everything now and we don't want to work for it. That is sad. We wonder why we have wide-spread health issues. We are daily bombarded with misinformation and half-truths, all designed to grab our attention without any regard to the damage that they do to our health.

We used to be a caring nation. And an active nation. And a responsible nation. What happened?

Believe me when I say that I would not ever want anyone to be censored on what they can say or write. Its part of what makes this nation great. I just wonder; what ever happened to responsible journalism?

Is it really so important to get people to read your article that you have to present a headline that is so far from the truth that it really doesn't match the article?

If you read the article, it does not make the claim that this is a cure for all your health issues, it's just the headline, which is honestly, all most readers will ever see and read!

That's all I've got to say for now!

No comments:

Post a Comment