Alex Berezow

Imagine what a typical American might do for breakfast: Fry a few slices of bacon, slather Nutella on a piece of toast, and pour a hot cup of coffee while checking e-mail on a smartphone. If we are to believe everything we read in the news, then that rather common daily ritual could cause you to die from cancer.

Nutella, a chocolate hazelnut spread, was the latest victim in the ceaseless fear-mongering over food. Outrageous headlines went viral on the Internet. The Daily Mail breathlessly shouted, “Could Nutella give you CANCER?” while Quartz wrote, “Stores Are Pulling Nutella After Report Links It To Cancer” — later corrected because initial reports by the BBC and other outlets were wrong.

These stories give “fake news” a bad name. They are an embarrassment to journalism and a dereliction of duty. Once again, the media simply copied and pasted what other outlets reported, and few if any major news organizations did their jobs properly by reading the original scientific report.

The original study was produced by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). The study wasn’t even about Nutella. Instead, it examined how many potentially cancer-causing contaminants existed in food products that contain palm and other oils (very common ingredients), and then it estimated how much people ate in their diets.

Its conclusion was rather boring: Most adults don’t eat enough of these contaminants to raise any health concerns. Infants and children consume more of these contaminants than adults, but their exposure level is still very far below what scientific studies have shown to be potentially dangerous in lab rats.

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Additionally, the palm oil in Nutella isn’t even the primary or biggest source of these contaminants in the average diet. Baby formula, cookies, pastries, cakes, potatoes, and margarine all contain these contaminants.

Moreover, there is no epidemiological evidence linking palm oil to cancer in humans. On the contrary, the tocotrienols present in palm and other oils could conceivably prevent cancer. And finally, the company that makes Nutella said it doesn't refine its palm oil at the high temperatures the study said increased risk.

Nutrition research is often flimsy, and headlines reporting on them are generally over-simplified and hyperbolic. Bacon? Burnt toast? Hot water? Coffee? Wi-fi? Cell phones? Somebody, somewhere, has made a dubious claim linking each of them to cancer.

Indeed, if one searches hard enough, one could find that almost anything has been linked to cancer.

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Unfortunately, it’s precisely this sort of “blame-and-claim” compensation culture, encouraged by lawyers and facilitated by a general lack of scientific understanding, that results in ludicrous jackpot verdicts, such as the one that awarded $70 million to a woman based on the erroneous belief that baby powder causes ovarian cancer.

Additionally, fear-mongering inevitably results in the “Chicken Little” effect. If people are told that everything causes cancer, they will tune out. To perform a true public service, the media ought to be in the business of separating health scares from health threats.

Continuing to conflate the two does nothing other than undermine people’s faith in evidence based science and public health.

Alex Berezow, Senior Fellow of Biomedical Science at the American Council on Science and Health, holds a Ph.D. in microbiology and is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.

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