Contradictory advice can become a bit wearing

Do you ever find yourself wondering if anything’s safe these days?  The reason I ask is that some recent reading has left me confused, and not to say more than a tad frustrated, at the advice we’re meant to be heeding.  Here are a few examples from articles that I’ve come across recently:

• That a diet high in saturated milk fats can greatly increase your risk of inflammatory bowel disease

However, I then discover;

• That it may not be so bad for you to eat saturated fats, and that butter, cheese, eggs and yogurt can be good for the heart

• Why eating five times a day is better for you than three

Fine, but does that mean I discount,

• Fasting two days a week can have a number of health benefits

• How you can turn housework into a workout and burn up to 500 calories in 2 hours

So there is a positive to my weekly drudge …

• Housework should no longer count towards your weekly total of moderate activity

… or maybe not!

It seems to me that we’re doomed if we do and doomed in some other way if we don’t!  As soon as you feel you’re doing yourself a favour and benefitting your health in some way, usually by depriving yourself of something you love, the results of a new study hit the headlines and you discover that what you should actually be avoiding isn’t what you have been!

So, I’ve decided to join those who made up another headline this week “Great British Bake Off final watched by 9.1 million”.  I accept that sugar being bad for us is probably one thing that all these scientists agree on.  But, as I see it, you can monitor the quality of ingredients going into your cake, use your artistic juices to make something unique and get that wonderful feeling of wellbeing by nurturing others with your creation.  And, let’s face it, 9.1 million people enthusing about cake is a far weightier number than the 26 or whatever you see in the small print “of the … who took part in this study”.

I think I’m with Marie Antoinette on this one “Let them eat cake” tempered, of course, with a sprinkling of that age old advice “everything in moderation”!