Headlines to scare us or tempt us

Filed in archive Stay Healthy on October 25, 2007

Research on diets is something that has been going on for a long time and that probably will never stop.

Everyday we can read about new research that has discovered new and important facts for our health. "The X-diet can lead to heart attacks", "We are not eating enough X-vitamins", "Research says XX-food is dangerous for health"


Those aren't real headlines but you can recognize the style. They are out to alert us that they have found something new and "really" important. And when we look a bit closer we can see that most of the time we are not at risk at all.

Research is good and necessary but it is used by the media to get publicity. They know that strong headlines makes people buy the paper and of course that´s their job. But do you pay attention to them? What kind of headline makes you buy a magazine?

How often do you stop to buy a newspaper or magazine to read about the latest health research? Personally I don´t do it very often and especially not if it says "lose xx lbs in 5 days", because that is a widely used headline to get attention even though it might not have anything to do with research. Still so many people fall for it.