ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 24, 1996 TAG: 9603220019
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: G-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: RETAILING
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL
You may have heard about the recent study that linked drinking coffee to a low incidence of suicide in female nurses.
Or the one that said eating lots of tomatoes could reduce the risk of prostate cancer.
Or the report that said maybe, just maybe, green vegetables aren't the cure-all that your mother claimed they were.
But have your shopping habits changed?
Seems as though a new health-related study comes down the pike every few days, each as official-sounding as the last. And it seems, too, that they often contradict each other.
"Because there's a lot of different information out there, it's difficult for consumers to make intelligent decisions," said David Brinberg, head of the marketing department at Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business.
Nutritionists haven't changed their mantra - everything in moderation - in decades. And consumers seem, for the most part, to have taken that advice to heart. The International Food Information Council is conducting a study on the impact of studies (ironic, isn't it?) on consumers, and the initial findings show that we're more likely to pay attention to research that advocates moderate consumption than studies that demand major lifestyle changes.
That's because we know what we like, and our eating habits are firmly ingrained, said Brinberg, who has studied food-related consumer behavior. It usually takes a major event - a heart attack or pregnancy - to make us change the way we nosh.
But consumers do sometimes react to studies that are especially compelling, if they're backed up by plenty of evidence:
When the media first began reporting on research that linked drinking red wine to lowering cholesterol levels, for instance, wine sales began to rise, said Ed Kohn of Lee & Edwards Wine Merchants in downtown Roanoke. As more and more studies were conducted, and as the new findings backed up the old ones, sales skyrocketed.
"More and more people come into the store and said, 'I know I'm supposed to drink red wine; what can you recommend?'" he said. Even the federal government responded to the studies by issuing dietary guidelines that recognize moderate wine-drinking can be good for you.
America's production of processed oats jumped from 73 million bushels in 1989 to 91 million bushels in 1990 after researchers published study after study about the healthful effects of oat bran.
And per-capita consumption of eggs dropped from 402 in 1945 to 233.5 in 1991, as the media were flooded with studies on fat and cholesterol.
But smaller, one-shot studies such as the recent one linking coffee and the suicide rate are unlikely to cause noticeable changes in the way we spend our money.
"The general attitude is, 'Well, we're just going to see something else tomorrow,'" said Linda Braun, a spokeswoman for the Park Ridge, Ill.-based American Egg Board.
The key, said Dr. Lee Tucker, chief pathologist at Community Hospital of Roanoke Valley and co-owner of Lee & Edwards, is to look for broad trends instead of reacting on a daily basis to study results.
Around here, coffee drinkers - at least the ones at Mill Mountain Coffee & Tea in downtown Roanoke - seem to be taking that advice to heart. There hasn't been any big surge in coffee-drinking female nurses in these parts lately, said a woman behind the counter.
"Well, we do get a lot of depressed-looking people in here," she said with a laugh, "but I don't think it's because they read the study."
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