From gorging on sweets to advice on cholesterol levels

A Shell station on Summit Avenue and Essex Street in Hackensack is selling a gallon of regular for $2.13.9, if you use a credit card, or 12 cents less than the same gasoline at another Shell station on Cedar Lane in Teaneck. Prices have stopped falling and even cheap, off-brand stations are selling regular for $1.99.9, if you pay cash.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

There were too many "mays," "mights" and "maybes" in The Record's major story on cholesterol and heart disease on Wednesday.

The Better Living cover story, promoted on the front page, is typical of the media's flawed focus on health and nutrition, and their tendency to jump all over draft reports (BL-1).

The Woodland Park daily did a disservice to those who read only the Page 1 promotion or headlines, and didn't slog through all of the quotes from doctors.

In the penultimate paragraph, the reporter finally acknowledges "the best advice is the same advice that doctors and nutritionists have been repeating for generations."

"Eat a well-balanced diet heavy on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and ... fats found in ... fish, nuts and olive oil, while limiting red meat, fried foods and sugary desserts" (Wednesday's BL-3). 

So, you don't have to limit your intake of the saturated fat in butter and heavy cream, two ingredients that show up often in recipes recommended by The Record's freelancers?

It doesn't help that The Record's food pages are filled with endless copy promoting pastries, cake and chocolate or that the chief restaurant critic rarely eats a salad, but always leaves room for a huge hunk of meat and dessert.

Christie obsession

Today's front page carries another so-called analysis of Governor Christie's campaign style "while he considers a presidential future for himself" (A-1). 

There is no mention of a new Rutgers-Eagleton poll that 68 percent of New Jersey voters say the GOP bully is putting his personal presidential aspirations ahead of his public state duties (Wednesday's A-3).

This is the second dose of major bad poll news for Christie, and both times the editors kept it off of the front page.

Tuesday's A-3 carried another breathless Melissa Hayes story about Christie, who, on a visit to New Hampshire, discussed what he'd do, "if he were to run and win the presidency."

An "Analysis" of Christie's proposed state budget appeared on Saturday's front page, and Christie columns ran on Sunday's and Monday's A-1.

The media obsession with Christie often is justified by reporting he won a second term in a landslide, but editors never mention the turnout was the lowest of any gubernatorial election in state history.

Voters are apathetic, and sick of all of the Christie-White House coverage, which is turning off more and more of them.

Laughable headline

Today's Better Living cover carries a headline that has readers howling (BL-1):

Versatile chickpea

gains popularity

Chickpeas have been a staple of diets in India, Armenia, Turkey and the Middle East for, what, a hundred years?

But then a food editor scrambling for a story idea discovers them and treats her readers liked imbeciles.