I am looking to write an online article about the negative effects of eating/drinking a certain item. There are articles that have a title such as "Top Health Benefits of _____". What could be used to describe the exact opposite?
There is a similarly titled question, "Antonym of benefit". However, the content of the question is different and its answer is not helpful for my situation.
Top Health Risks is the phrase that you're looking for!
Risk (noun)
a situation involving exposure to danger.
[ODO]
For reference, here's an Ngram plot on the usage of "Health Risks of Alcohol" from 1975 to 2008.
You could consider using health hazard which means:
A danger to health resulting from exposure to environmental pollutants, such as asbestos or ionizing radiation, or to a life-style choice, such as cigarette smoking or chemical abuse.
[Mosby's Medical Dictionary, 9th edition]
How about detriment?
loss, damage, disadvantage, or injury.
a cause of loss or damage.
"Top Health Detriments of ________"
I don't believe that there is a single word that fits exactly in that sentence structure "Health _____ of", but normally in medical circles things are either beneficial or harmful, so one would probably go for something like
"10 harmful effects of __________"
or
"10 ways ___________ can harm you"
or perhaps
"10 detrimental side-effects of__________"
although in today's world of over-senasionalizing things, for the tabloid-style title you'd go:
"10 ways ____________ can kill you!"
or
"10 ways ____________ will ruin your health!"
Consider,
negative health effects
deleterious (health) effects
deleterious
Having a harmful effect; injurious: the deleterious effects of smoking. American Heritage Dictionary
Harmful often in a subtle or unexpected way deleterious effects; deleterious to health M-W
Injurious to health Ramdom House
Threats, perhaps. The Top Threats to Health from consuming _____.
If you Google Threats to Health you will see that it is quite commonly used in the context you're suggesting.
from the World Health Organisation, for instance.
Disbenefits is a word I have used from time to time, though I was astonished to find that it doesn't appear in all dictionaries so may be office-speak, slang or new and is designated as 'British [English]' in the site linked in this answer
Disbenefit
Noun: A disadvantage or loss resulting from something: ‘an environmental disbenefit to the area of Teesside’
www.oxforddictionaries.com
E.g. "The health disbenefits of eating [these things] are..."
The opposite of a health benefit is a health penalty. Googling "health penalty" "health benefit" comes up with quite a few significant links.
The word pair fits also etymologically quite nicely. Penalty as well as benefit are originally human acts: A punishment (Latin poena), and a good deed (bene factum). Both terms imply some sort of book keeping, as in in accounting or a game. Both terms for originally human acts have acquired an impersonal meaning as well: "The tax benefits of marriage", or "The Financial Penalty for LGBT Women". Using the term penalty, even when describing a consequence which is not the act of a single person, evokes an image of a rule based framework, like a sports game or a court case. Certainly some possibly imaginary score is lowered.
Both terms are frequently used in economics where they apply quite naturally, because it's a rule based framework where scores are kept.
Using them in medicine applies this concept of rule-based score keeping to a person's health and interactions, thus "economifying" or "gamifying" it.
Top Health Malefits of ____
OED with prefix mal+ ‘ill’, ‘wrong’, ‘improper(ly)’:
Self-conscious use as an antithesis to benefit n.
detriment, disadvantage, encumbrance, hindrance, nuisance, obstacle
Antonyms: advantage, aid, assistance, benefit, boon, foredeal, help
Something that is harmful or disadvantageous.
Merriam-Webster has no entry for it, but upon search suggests malefic ‘malignant’, ‘malicious’. The related actor term malefactor, it lists of course. So the word fits in well with other mal+ terms, although some readers may mistake it to relate to male instead.
Other associations people may have are Maleficent, the evil fairy in Disney’s 1959 adaptation of Sleeping Beauty and later installments of the franchise, and the board game Malefiz that is also known as Barricade.
Consider "Top Health Contraindication of ...".
Definition: medical reason for using something, such as a treatment, procedure, or activity. It implies risk.
Example: Quinia in small doses and stimulants are appropriate whenever there is no contraindication to their employment.
