Groundbreaking study stuns researchers by being clear and incontrovertible.
LTHOUGH scientists continue to release the findings of hundreds of studies every year, recent survey results show that the public is fast losing interest in, as one responder said, "getting jerked around on a regular basis."
The first-of-its-kind survey of public opinion on scientific findings clearly shows an exasperated public that, as one researcher put it, "plans to eat and drink pretty much anything it wants to at this point."
A recent study finding that sodium may not be bad for humans after all appeared to be the breaking point for many responders, who overwhelmingly chose "no chance in hell" as the likelihood they would take study results into consideration when making dietary decisions in the future.
Not surprisingly, sales of pizza, potato chips, and salted peanuts have skyrocketed. Planters has just named December "Mixed-Nuts Month." Not to be outdone, DiGiorgno's is naming 2012 "The Year of the Jumbo Double-Cheese Deep-Dish Pizza Deluxe-o-rama."
In response, researchers are said to be fast-tracking a study that finds that sodium is bad for some populations after all, but only on alternate Wednesdays and Saturdays.
Another study, which shows that bad cholesterol can be converted to good cholesterol with talk therapy, is slated to be ignored by the public as early as next month.
Additional findings scheduled to be released in 2012 and dismissed by vast swaths of the population:
- Healthy rats exposed to 800 hours of continuous autotune songs committed suicide at a rate twenty percent higher than rats who were depressed because they thought they were about to receive Fruit Loops, but at the very last second saw their food trays switched out for one with the same old brown pellets.
- Eating six small meals a day is better than eating one enormous meal a day, but not as good as eating twelve really small meals a day or twenty-four itsy-bitsy meals a day. Each meal should contain at least ten fruits and vegetables, ideally from the rutabaga family, locally sourced but not over-sourced.
- A group of heart patients lived an average of three days longer taking medications with Kool-Aid than did a second group taking medications with tap water. However, researchers cautioned that the implications of this trial for Kool-Aid drinkers are centuries away.
© 11.17.11 Kate Heidel
