Dr. Peter J. Weiss

Today I have another col­umn inspired by this morning’s news­pa­per.

As I was leaf­ing through the USA Week­end mag­a­zine, I came to the “HealthS­mart” fea­ture titled “3 Sim­ple Steps to a Healthy Heart” on page 8.

It’s a short arti­cle with some stan­dard but good advice for health:

1) eat more fruits and veg­eta­bles;

2) cut down on sug­ary drinks; and

3) lift weights.

I thought to myself, “Good advice, but how often do peo­ple have to hear it before they can take action?”

Knowl­edge is not enough.  Peo­ple need help to change their habits.

Then I turned one page where I found the “CookS­mart” fea­ture on page 10.

Today CookS­mart helps read­ers to make “Deli­cious Dough­nut Holes.”  The per dough­nut hole num­bers are: 70 calo­ries, 8g car­bo­hy­drates, 1g pro­tein and 4g fat.

Assum­ing you eat six of these you’ve just con­sumed 420 calo­ries and 24g of fat, and many of us would have a lot more than six.

I’m not sure this fea­ture should be called “CookS­mart” — at least not today.

So what gives with these mixed mes­sages?

I find this to be a very com­mon sit­u­a­tion, espe­cially in the media.  Remem­ber most news and enter­tain­ment media exist solely to sell adver­tis­ing; they are not on a mis­sion to help you be healthy.

If a story or ad cap­tures your eye­balls, they will print it or broad­cast it, regard­less of how it affects your health and well­be­ing.

But we also see mixed mes­sages from our gov­ern­ment, which incen­tivizes health­care more than it does health.  And from the health­care sys­tem which wants you to have more tests, pills and treat­ments.

Even my church serves dough­nuts and cook­ies at the ser­vice I attend, despite the obvi­ous harm­ful nature of these items for most of the folks who eat them.

Who can you trust to have your best inter­est at heart?  Who wants to help you be healthy in mind, body and spirit and will not mix the mes­sage?  Truth is, you can only trust your­self.

You must be on guard against the ads, pro­gram­ming, advice and just plain ordi­nary Amer­i­can ways of liv­ing that are harm­ful for you.

Cut through the mixed mes­sages to get a laser-like focus on only what is healthy for you.

You can do it.  The first step is being aware of the issue, and that’s what today’s col­umn is all about.  Be well!