CC image via flickr: Iain Croll
Travel used to be considered exotic and only something hugely-adventurous people would do. In 1968, Simon Raven wrote “Travel: A Moral Primer” for The Spectator.
In it, he detailed the true definition of travel in the ‘then’ modern age, especially for students. Although very much of its time, some of the advice still rings true almost 50 years on.
“Travel is when you assess your money and resources and then set out, alone or with chosen friends, to make an unhurried journey to a distant goal… leaving only a post restante address [if that], and giving no date for your return.”
Raven goes on to list 7 important maxims to ensure your travel is as ‘real’ as possible. They are frightfully dated, but this one is particularly good and one I wish we could all live by in 2017.
“Courtesy requires that your parents should be told you are actually going, but you should imply it is a brief, safe trip… Keep your real route and destination strictly to yourself.”
On the face of it, great. There are 152000 cases of stroke in the UK every year, so if this is true it’s a great weapon in the battle against it.
But, of course, thats not the full story. If you read more closely, you’ll see that the lead scientist admitted that: “research is needed to understand the connection between egg consumption and stroke risk”.
What was worse was that there’s no UK stroke expert included in the article – only someone from the ‘clearly unbiased’ Egg Nutrition Centre.
That’s why I was relieved to see that the Stroke Association were more cautious in their reception of the research.
Our comment: It is very hard to establish a single item in a person’s diet that will have a positive or negative effect on their health https://t.co/hUFf7h2DqS
Medical reporting is generally fairly suspect in mass-market media. One small-scale piece of research can sometimes be trumpeted as a major cause for celebration or change in diet, when clearly there’s more to it than that.
It’s why cause-related charities have such a big role to play in how we perceive sensationalist stories.
The claims that strawberries/coffee/red wine/chocolate can prevent cancer/heart disease/dementia (delete as appropriate) have been around for years – most of them with very little substance.
The likes of the BHF, Alzheimers Research, Stroke Association and many more have teams of experts used to assessing these sort of stories, many of which are – frankly – hogwash.
These teams provide a level-headed and often cautious response that we’d do well to accept.
By contrast the positive news this week about the early trials of a new Alzheimers drug were welcomed across the board, including by the aforementioned Alzheimers Research.
Media proliferation needs a counterpoint
In the era before multichannel TV and the internet, the flimsily-researched, sensational story got short shrift.
There was enough news to go round, and clickbait headlines weren’t generally necessary.
In the 21st century, that has understandably changed. A possibly erroneous story printed on one website gets copied and reproduced in countless other areas, this proliferating a false assertion.
So we need voices of trust and authority to sort the wheat from the chaff more than ever before.
And this is just another reason why charities need your support.
