I get irritated by commercials that tout the latest supposed health benefits of certain foods. How on earth did any of our ancestors live long enough for us to descend from them without knowing which foods were healthy and which were apparently lethal poisons?
I remember the good old days when claiming that your breakfast cereal might prevent heart attacks was forbidden. We lived in blissful ignorance of the benefits of fiber and the evils of cholesterol.
Now we are subjected to an unending barrage of claims that various foods may help prevent cancer, or may help prevent strokes, or other similar nonsense. Once you see that word "may" in there, you can basically write off any claims that are made. Generally, I mentally (or vocally, to the vast chagrin of my wife) add "or it may not" to these proclamations.
What really annoys me are claims that "Product X may reduce your risk of condition Y." This is a double whammy. First of all, the word "may" is used. Secondly, even if the claim be true, how significant is it without knowing what the original risk was? If my odds against contracting condition Y were a million to one, and using product X drops that to two million to one, then I think that product X had better well taste much better than its competitors. In other words, there is (to me) no significant difference in the risk, even though the risk has been halved.
So the way I see it, I can claim that reading this column may save your life. The odds of you being hit by a bus while reading this are much lower than when you aren't reading it. Therefore, this article may have been shown to prevent death by collision by buses.
Maybe this article needs to be required reading for everyone. After all, countless people are killed every year by buses. And what about the children? Not only will this keep them from a horrible fate, it may actually improve their reading skills. Occasionally, I may get most of the grammar right, and this can only be helpful.
Of course, the unmentioned flip side is that reading this column may kill you. Is it really healthy for you to be sitting so close to a device that is continually producing high energy electromagnetic radiation as an unavoidable consequence of its operation? Maybe you should be out exercising instead of sitting there reading this.
Just don't exercise near the bus lines.
You can respond to my ranting here.
Rant on, you crazy diamond.