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Show i A preoccupation with food & health the life expectancy of these Eskimos was 46 (the average for a U.S. citizen is 76). The main reason they had low levels of heart diseaw tivity. So what does Mendenhall recommend rec-ommend for better health? "Eat a balanced diet, one that includes in-cludes meat, milk, bread, fruits and vegetables, exercise regularly, maintain ideal weight, keep an open, active mind and learn how to relax." Sound advice, but this guy is never going to sell books or make the talk show circuit. By DENNIS HINKAMP Consumer Information Writer Utah State University "We're afraid to die and apprehensive ap-prehensive of becoming old. We want everything to be 100 percent safe, regardless of our actions." Many people have tried to explain ex-plain our preoccupation with food and health, but this quote bluntly gets to the heart of the matter better than most. Dr. Von Mendenhall, food scientist scien-tist in the Utah State University College of Family Life, is responsible responsi-ble for this quote and adds, 'This obsession leads us to be neophobic--afraid of new thingssuch as chemicals which we believe could have catastrophic results over which we have no control." Other quotes: "We all want to live in the recent past. A time when things were so much better. "-Dr. Rod Brown, head of USU's Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences. "We are the world's healthiest hypochondriacs," Dr. Bonita Wyse, dean of USU's College of Family Life. Mendenhall says one of the problems prob-lems is that people remember the original health scare as it appeared' in the media, but don't remember the later evidence that contradicted the original scare. For instance, he says the fish oil fixation of recent years is a good example of not looking at the right numbers. Studies showed that a group of Eskimos had a low incidence in-cidence of death from heart disease and a high intake of fish oils. Quickly a conclusion was drawn that fish oils were healthy and were responsible for the low numbers of heart disease deaths. Mendenhall said if people would have examined the issue a little closer, they would have noted that |