By Fumitaka Sato
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In early January, it was almost impossible to find natto on the shelves at grocery stores. Many people wondered where all the natto had gone. This happened after the popular Kansai TV information program "Hakkutsu! Aruaru Daijiten" (Encyclopedia of Living ) aired the installment "Eating Natto is good for dieting" which was broadcast on January 7 and which deceived the viewing audience into believing the Natto diet. But two weeks after the show it was reported that the TV program was a fabrication.
It has been found that they made fabrications before. "Eating lettuce makes you sleep very well" in 1998 and "Miso soup diet" in 2006 were also manipulations. As you can see, the TV company seems to make fabrications periodically and tries to get the audiences' attention somehow.
The reason a TV company thinks it is all right to make a fake program is that the result (good ratings) is more important than the truth. As a result of the scandal, the production company decided to end the program on Jan. 23 and announced that they would cut the president's salary and dismiss the head producer concerned. It is also hoped that they will resolve to stop using the viewer rating system and stop producing false programs.
Of course the TV program was wrong to deceive the public, but how were people so easily deceived by such a contradiction that eating will make you slim? In 1998, Gunma Univ. Prof. Kuniko Takahashi introduced the idea of "food-faddism," which describes people who get their information about food and nutrition through TV and magazines even without scientific data and over evaluate its importance to their health.
According to her research, "food-faddism" happens because (1) there are too many choices in the food supply, (2) there is an obsession to be healthy and to be good-looking, (3) there is a vague anxiety and unease about food in general, and (4) there is a tendency to be overly influenced by images and information from the media. She points out that when these four conditions come together, "food-faddism" occurs and that at present Japan has all four of them.
There also was a "Vegetable gelatin diet" fad throughout Japan before. According to news reports, agar, which is a raw material for vegetable gelatin, was stolen from store houses at that time. A TBS health information TV program ran a story titled "White kidney beans diet" and caused many healthy people to get diarrhea and some were taken to the hospital.
But no diet boom lasts long because of the Japanese tendency to get excited easily and then cool down soon after. WouldnÕt this Japanese characteristic, however, show up in other areas too, such as in elections? Some people decide their vote just by a candidate's looks, while others decide by listening to a speech only one time and then do not follow the candidates after that.
Can we create a "Beautiful Japan" by voting with a transitory emotion? If we don't want to see this kind of thing happen, we must not take what the media says at face value alone. The time has gone when we can believe in anything that we see on TV. We must try to pay better attention to everything that happens around us at all times.