I don't mean just doctors giving bad advice. It comes from the top, too.

For example, I remember when eggs were bad for you. Now they're good for you. The amount of alcohol you can safely drink changes constantly. Not too long ago a glass of wine a day was good for you. I poisoned myself with margarine believing the government saying it was healthier than butter. Coffee cycles between being bad and good. Masks work, masks don't work. MJ is addictive, then not addictive, then addictive again. Prozac is safe, then not safe. Xanax, too.

And on and on.

BTW, everyone always knew that smoking was bad for you. My dad went to high school in the 1930s, and said the kids called cigarettes "coffin nails". It's hard to miss the coughing fits, and the black lungs in an autopsy. I remember in the 1960s seeing a smoker's lung in formaldehyde. It was completely black, with white cancerous blobs. I avoided cigarettes ever since.

The notion that people didn't know that cigs were bad until the 1960s is nonsense.