Neurosis or cirrhosis?

Great news for women who interact socially with other humans, and who did not have the good sense to be born Muslim or Mormon: Any alcohol consumption, even one drink a day, even less than that, causes cancer. No word yet on what sticking with bread and water in social situations does to a person's well-being, but that bread had better be whole wheat!

Or had it? With studies out explaining that a thimble of wine sends you to an early grave, and that sharing an elevator with someone who just smoked a cigarette will do you in, that is, if the trace amounts of alcohol you've consumed first-hand do not, it's hard to know what to make of the latest in health panics: we are now ill from all our panicking! And what better angle to approach this from than Won't Somebody Think Of The Children.

Whereas health-obsession used to be the exclusive realm of Jane Brody and the like, now even fetuses are worried about trans-fats. OK, it's just that eight-year-olds will only eat organic. Same deal. Children have always been moral absolutists, so it's no surprise some have latched on to whole grains as their cause of choice, that for every clichéd child-raised-on-no-sweets-who-goes-to-a-friend's-house-for-the-Froot-Loops, there's a kid lecturing his friends on how one Froot Loop, just the one, will be the end of them.

Some well-meaning adults speak up for the wisdom of babes, citing this or that Industry that forced us to think this or that vice is appealing, as though if it were not for advertising, we'd all subsist on kale (which I tried recently-blech) and brown rice. Meanwhile others blame illness on our refusal to embrace the principle of moderation, like they do in Europe... except that, oh well, moderation won't do, now that experts have found that so much as sharing a subway car with someone eating McDonalds is health-wise the equivalent to jumping in front of the train.

Long story short, health articles will, sooner than a glass of wine, turn a mind into mush, and will by all accounts take more years off your life.