Re: Few U.S. Adults Lead Healthy Lives

In article <je7r615bmp9jccl9m5a16ai6jjullutj2v@xxxxxxx>,
Jim Chinnis <jchinnis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>The researchers noted how many people...ate at least five fruits
>>and vegetables every day...
>
>I'm surprised that 3% manage even that alone. I suspect no one
>really does. Some days I eat almost nothing.
>
>They must never have a colonoscopy, since that requires fasting.

I'm sure they meant on average, or most days, but if the wording really
was "every day", I'm surprised too.

>I wonder what the actual wording of the survey was.

It's probably "servings" rather than number of items. Sometimes
servings of vegetables are defined as half a cup (4 oz or 100-125ml).
Dunno about you, but if I prepare some nutritious, low-calorie
vegetable like broccoli or green beans or leafy salad or whatever, I
don't think about serving size, and I eat a good bit more than half a
cup of it. I eat a lot of veggies that are mixed into other things,
like soups. I haven't a clue how much that is, even though I make the
soup myself. I just chop the veggies and toss them in without any
effort to measure or calculate how many bowls of soup I'll end up
with.

Even if they explain carefully to the respondents just what a serving
consists of, I suspect most people will have a very hard time
estimating just how much of these foods they eat, especially for some
"researcher" who just phoned them up out of the blue. (Isn't this an
awfully selective method of doing a survey? Don't most people with a
clue let their answering machines deal with telephone solicitors, or at
least refuse to talk to them?)

Constructing a survey and selecting a sample to give results that are
meaningful is a very difficult task, and not something most people,
even most researchers, can do without the help of a specialist in this
area of statistics and social science. The interviewers can strongly
bias the results unintentionally by factors like facial expression and
tone of voice, since most people will unconsciously bias their answers
to tell the interviewer what they think he wants to hear, or what will
make themselves look better. And whether or not the survey was well
designed and implemented, the results will tend to be distorted and
oversimplified by the press.
.

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