So the research report that the article Don linked to was based on said that potato chips, potato crisps, _and_ bread and cookies and apparently pretty much everything else we eat contains that carcinogen (I forget the name, but it sounded like a kind of plastic[*]).

Your morning TV show was just being less sensationalist than most, in focusing on the crisps in stead of the bread; OTOH, for once I kind of agree with the meeja's slanting of it -- as you said yourself, crisps being bad for you isn't news.

And no, this wasn't from any company at all, but the University of Stockholm, IIRC. The food industry were quick to play it down, as "not peer-reviewed, so therefore more sensationalism than real research" -- but the feeling I got was that this was just because it hadn't been published and peer-reviewed *yet*; that it had just been leaked to the (Swedish) media a bit too early, who themselves put the sensationalist spin on it and made it spread world-wide.

Which of course plays right into the hands of anyone (*cough*thefoodindustry*cough*) who wants to play it down: By the time it _is_ published and peer-reviewed, it'll be "old news" and won't get anything near as many sensationalist headlines as it did now, while it could still be dismissed as "not peer-reviewed".

Dunno if that's just coincidence, or if it was the plan all along.

---

[*]: No wonder -- plastics *are* carbohydrates, aren't they?