The recent headline that a “Daily croissant can take a toll on your heart in under a month” was like a dagger to mine, just as my beloved local baker had got really good at vegan ones. Not that it has to be a croissant: researchers at Oxford investigated the impact on heart health of a diet high in saturated fat for just over three weeks. It’s bad, if you had any lingering doubt.
This comes on the back of admittedly unsurprising, but personally devastating health stories such as the one saying that eating croissants when you are stressed reduces “arterial elasticity” – a very stressful read. I also felt targeted by research on how unhealthy snacking sabotages the benefits of a healthy diet (this week a woman in a cafe asked if I was “having a party” when I put in my cake order; I was not). Then there is the continued drip-feed of doom about sedentary living and poor sleep, and general angst-provoking news about environmental contaminants.
Honestly, it’s all just really unwelcome. And I’m pretty sure stressing about ruining my health is bad for my health too, so I’ve come up with a solution: wellness disinformation. There is this notion in the US of people living in a paranoid parallel world maintained by a diet of rolling ultra-rightwing news propaganda and I’m proposing something similar, but for health. Basically, I want to live in a bespoke bubble of vaguely plausible, bias-confirming delusion in which everything is fine, a little of what you fancy still does you good and too much of a good thing is even better.
If no Russian bot farm will do it for me, I suppose I’ll have to create my own. Coming up first on Beddington HealthNews: pizza, the new superfood; why a nice sit-down might be your healthiest habit and how microplastics are improving global fertility. Later, we will be reporting on the surprising cardiovascular benefits of combining scrolling and crunching, and the immunity-boosting power of pesticide residues. Then tune in tonight to hear how three hours’ sleep is centenarians’ best-kept longevity secret.
I feel better already.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist