It's not a recent trend, either.
Take nutrition. When I was a kid, butter was evil, so we were supposed to eat margarine. Then suddenly unsaturated fats were discovered to be bad for you again. Then, all fats were assailed as harmful to health - especially the insidious trans fats (ooo!). Then someone found out that babies and children needed a good amount of fat for brain development. Sugar and carbohydrates are under attack at present, and ketogenic diets, once the province of pre-1950s era diabetics. Soon after, it'll be revealed all the horrible damage we're doing to our bodies with keto-Atkins hysteria. To all of these, there's a grain of truth, or something interesting to be learned. But that is never how it is presented in the news. Instead, it's "New scientific breakthrough today, as researchers at College University released preliminary findings that snorting LSD can help people kick smoking and obsessive-compulsive behaviors blah blah blah".