Wednesday, 11 February 2009

Perfectly Safe Food is 'Perfectly Safe' Shocker

Ovivores throughout Britain rejoiced today as tabloid newspapers finally allowed them to eat unfertilised baby chickens again without fear of succumbing to heart disease, cancer or any number of unrelated terminal maladies.

Having scared everyone 10 months ago with a timely Easter warning of the terrifying dangers of eating eggs, The Daily Mail today announced that they had in fact eggexaggerated the whole thing and deliberately misrepresented scientific research so they could sell more newspapers. A source said, 'Well, we all make mistakes. Just some more than others. Deliberately, every day.'

A number of other newspapers agreed that eating eggs not only doesn't give you cancer or cause heart attacks, but suggested that they might even be good for you and taste nice with ham.

Bizarrely, almost every single article included some bewilderingly unfunny variation on the phrase 'Go to work on an egg' - an advertising slogan from the 1950s, when everything in Britain was great unlike today, which is rubbish because of knife-wielding single mothers and homosexuals on benefits.

Eggs had originally been blamed for causing heart disease and increasing cholestoral based on a study that found that people who ate eggs tended to be older and fatter, more likely to smoke and drink and less likely to exercise than average. Therefore, it was clear that it was eggs, not the fags, booze and obesity, that were to blame for incidences of strokes and heart disease.

Experts revealed that a number of other foodstuffs also might not kill you, including bread, water and chicken McNuggets - but recommended that people remain scared of everything they put into their mouths just in case.

An NHS Spokesman may or may not have said: 'But....but, we said all of this the same day that stupid, unfounded article came out in April 2008. Nobody listened!', before sighing dejectedly and trudging back to the office, never to be heard of again.

4 comments:

  1. Funny piece, but I am shocked to say the reporting by the wail in this case really wasn't too bad.

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  2. The April 08 piece was worse, based as it was on a complete and willful misrepresentation of research.

    As for this one: eh. It's not *awful* because it doesn't do anything all the other tabloids haven't done either, which is relay a complete non-story that something doesn't kill you. That's pretty vacuous news. A lot of things don't kill you.

    It's mostly down to lazy reporting, which is almost refreshing compared with the usual homophobia/xenophobia/auntiephobia

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  3. I haven't read the April one. Can't bring myself to. But this article still ain't so bad. Not for the hate. They do report on the research reasonably well once the headline and introductory paragraphs are out of the way. I think taking an automated aversion response to a piece because it is wailed is all too easy.

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  4. Apologies for forgetting to actually add the link to the article in originally. It's now at the top.

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