©Viktor Koen |
In 1988, the surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, proclaimed ice cream to a be public-health menace right up there with cigarettes. Alluding to his office's famous 1964 report on the perils of smoking, Dr. Koop announced that the American diet was a problem of "comparable" magnitude, chiefly because of the high-fat foods that were causing coronary heart disease and other deadly ailments.
He introduced his report with these words: "The depth of the science base underlying its findings is even more impressive than that for tobacco and health in 1964."
Comment: We suspect that there's much more that the medical community agrees on, and we came to believe and live by, due to "informational cascade". Which, one must bare in mind, it starts from those in power and then "cascades" to reach each household.