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August 21, 2001
Good food - bad food Nannies use public schools as a political football
Utah lawmakers heard stern warnings on Friday from Nannies intent on removing soft drink vending machines from the state's public schools, and the Salt Lake Tribune's account of the hearings may have subtly helped the effort along. The Tribune article repeats the old canard about sugared drinks and broken bones, claiming (out of context, and without attribution) that "a study shows soda causes a loss of bone density in adolescent girls." As we've told you before, this porous myth was born in the work of Harvard's Grace Wyshak, whose study never bothered to ask the young girls how much soda they drank, or how often. Wyshak herself admitted that "causality cannot be inferred from the data" arising from this "research."
Utah lawmakers heard stern warnings on Friday from Nannies intent on removing soft drink vending machines from the state's public schools, and the Salt Lake Tribune's account of the hearings may have subtly helped the effort along. The Tribune article repeats the old canard about sugared drinks and broken bones, claiming (out of context, and without attribution) that "a study shows soda causes a loss of bone density in adolescent girls." As we've told you before, this porous myth was born in the work of Harvard's Grace Wyshak, whose study never bothered to ask the young girls how much soda they drank, or how often. Wyshak herself admitted that "causality cannot be inferred from the data" arising from this "research."
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