Comestible confusion

As usual on my way to pick Nikki up from work today I was listening to Radio 4. The pundits were discussing research into links between diet and prostate cancer and when I joined the programme one guy was going on about how he has recognised that dairy foods carry an increased risk and that he's eliminated them from his diet completely.

Now I'm as worried about prostate cancer as the next man. Well, actually, it's probably the examination to check me out for prostate cancer that me and the next man are worried about, but anyway... a life without dairy? No butter? No ice-cream? No CHEESE? No thank you.

As the programme continued, the alternative viewpoint came from a lady researcher, who shot the guy's argument down in flames. That's my spin on her arguments anyway. "Dairy hater obliterated by gorgeous cream-loving temptress." Or something. Her counter-argument was beautifully executed as a pincer movement. From the North came the revelation that this "increased risk" to dairy-eating prostate owners was only 10%. So if 1 person in every 1,000 is at risk on average, among the dairy eaters the risk will be 1.1 people in 1,000. Or, to put it another way, 1 person in 900. (Presumably. Stats was never my strong point.) Wow. I'm so scared. But she wasn't done. Remember the pincer movement. From the South came marching the second offensive. That dairy foods have positive effects too. In particular their calcium-related compounds have been proven to reduce the chances of suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

So there we have it. In stark, tabloid terms: go mad and keep your man gland, or stay sane but lose the juice.

But of course it's not as simple as that. These things never are. Foods are remarkably complicated chemical and biological agents, which often have beneficial AND deleterious effects in combination. And as if that weren't hard enough to get your head around, those effects can be reduced or exacerbated by your individual susceptibilities, whether genetic, environmental, or behavioural. Research continues into the complex interplay of all these factors, but increasingly I find myself asking: what's the point?

I don't want to live in a world where I have to eat exactly this much of this and not more than that much of that, not more than once a week and certainly not after consuming the other. Where I'm instructed to have five-a-day, exercise three times a day for twenty minutes at something that elevates my heart rate by 50%, avoid dairy, saturated fat, barbecued food, strong alcohol, sugar, cholesterol, and on, and on, and on. Jeez I'd be so stressed with worrying whether I was doing the right thing at the right time, the very act of trying to stay healthy would make me ill!

No, the research is all very interesting an' all, but I'll carry on doing what I like, when I like, and avoiding what I don't like, when I don't like it. If that approach has consequences then that's no different from any other approach. There's more to life than how long it is. It may be an overused phrase in these days of multi-forwarded emails, but it's still true that life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.