On October 15, JAMA Network Open published a study of about 9,000 Canadian adults linking more ultra-processed food to small, symptom-free brain injuries on MRI. On October 18, Fox News headlined it an “alarming study”. “Alarming” is a verdict on the study, and it sits in the headline before a single number. The figures the coverage carries are smaller: among 8,783 Canadian adults scanned once, small symptom-free brain injuries showed up in about 8% of the lightest eaters of ultra-processed food and just over 11% of the heaviest. That gap is the “40% higher odds”, and it appeared only when intake was counted per 2,000 calories. Memory and thinking scores barely differed. The tell: a feeling word that arrives where the number should be. “Linked to” is the hinting word: accurate, and weightless beside “brain damage”. The heaviest eaters were also more likely to have lower incomes and less schooling, and nobody was scanned twice, so the link cannot say what caused what. Fox’s first paragraph calls it a correlation; that researchers could not show cause waits until the 19th paragraph, second to last. Four and a half hours later, at 5:41 PM ET, the New York Post’s headline drops the hedge for “causing”. The sentence rides the fear of loss: something you already have, your brain and the food in your kitchen, is under threat, and nothing is offered in its place. “Popular foods Americans eat every day” makes the American reader the subject, though the people scanned were Canadians aged 35 to 69. CBC wrote the same study as an open question, with scientists “trying to determine” the answer. The first author’s own words in Fox’s story say the same: longer studies are needed.
