Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Lies, Damned Lies, and Vegetables

The latest Healthbolt Carnival led me to this article informing me that we're all a bunch of filthy liars when it comes to reporting the quantities of fruits and vegetables we eat. 

OK, that's overstating it (you'll never take away my melodramatic exaggerations of facts!). The article is much more moderate, relating merely the results of a study showing that, when informed about the benefits of fruit and veggie consumption and then asked how many servings they ate, people were more likely to report consuming the recommended 5 or more servings daily than when not prompted beforehand with these reminders.

This suggests that if you tell people something is good and then ask them if they do it, they're inclined to say yes, even if it's not entirely true, which is a known problem with self-reporting.

So, like I said, people are filthy liars. For shame, everyone.

Present company included, of course. I'd probably exaggerate my own consumption of fruits and vegetables if asked, with the best intentions in the world, because I know I should eat them and I do think about it and make the attempt, so I just assume I'm succeeding. 

But if I go over my actual food intake for a given day---let's say today---well, I've had a banana. And some grape jelly. I meant to eat a carrot and an apple as a mid-afternoon snack, but then someone brought cookies to the office, so naturally I had to have those, and then I was too full.

Not exactly a impressive tally. But I meant well, so I'm secretly adding points to my health score right now...and that's how you cheat and throw off the results of a self-reported study. 



2 comments:

Andrea said...

I can totally believe that. I fool myself. I have to throw away fruits and veggies that I fail to eat in time on a pretty regular basis, and I have lots of canned and frozen veggies languishing in the cabinets and freezer. It's all with perfectly good intentions. Wasting food is bad, and eating veggies is good. I just love chocolate and bread waaaay to much.

A'Llyn said...

Sadly true. I find that I usually will eat things that are convenient to take to work with me for snacks, like carrots and apples. Also, if I buy celery and then wash it and cut it up right away and leave it in the refrigerator ready to eat, I'm likely to grab some as a vehicle for peanut butter.

But interesting things like lettuce and cabbage and squash and so forth, which require actual preparation, will tend to just sit around looking glum.

This does not happen with chocolate.