Contradictory messages in communication – Part I

Right from childhood we have been told that elders and subject experts are fountains of knowledge and that word should be taken as the gospel truth. But what happens when the experts give us contradictory messages. Given below are some of the messages that have been contradicted by the experts over the period of time. 

Eating eggs is dangerous: It is traditional wisdom that eating eggs is harmful especially the yolk part of the egg. Egg we have been told is full of bad cholesterol. For lots of time yolk of an egg had become a four letter dirty word which has to be avoided at all times. Things have reached such a passé that in USA the customers can buy yolk less eggs but at an added cost.

The egg manufacturers got into the damage control mode. This is where the contradictory messages start pouring in. The egg manufacturers said “eating eggs is okay and eating 4 eggs per week is perfectly alright for a healthy person”. Now the US based research (sic) indicates that yolk is actually good for health and that it gives good rather than bad cholesterol. Now the health experts say that eating one egg per day is perfectly alright and that egg is one of the perfect bundles of energy that is provided by the nature.

NECC (National Egg Coordinating Committee in India) did even better. They said that egg was vegetarian and that eggs can be eaten by pure veggies. Their logic was very simple. The poultry hens are not fertilized and that the subsequent eggs given by poultry hens are not fertile and will not hatch out as chicks. This led to such a furore unleashed by the vegetarians that NECC had to back pedal. This incident gave birth to the marking of the infamous green and red dots on all the packaged food in India. Red indicates non vegetarian food items and green indicates vegetarian food.  

Bubble gum:  when I was young I used to consume lots of bubblegum. I was told by my family doctor not to eat bubble gum as it leads to mouth cancer. This advice did not make me leave my bubble gum eating habit. I did kick the habit of chewing gum during my post graduation days. Now the same doctor tells me that eating bubble gum is very good for the muscles in the mouth and that it aids digestion, and keeps bad breath away. I am CONFUSED!

Iodized salt: The craze for iodized salt I suspect is the creation of clever marketers. They realized that in a poor country like India more people use rock salt rather than smooth table salt. That is when the campaign was launched for the smother version of salt albeit it was called iodized salt. Most of the doctors promptly fell in line and started telling us that we should use only iodized salt and that deficiency of Iodine will lead to health problems. Now the same medical professionals have done a volte face. They are of the opinion that rock salt is better than iodized salt.