You're right, my father had bad sunburns as a child. Shades and hat are a good tip, as is reducing UV over-exposure. My point is that moderate sun exposure is

You're right, my father had bad sunburns as a child. Shades and hat are a good tip, as is reducing UV over-exposure. My point is that moderate sun exposure is healthy and good melanoma prevention. From what I've seen, there is quite a bit of research to back this up. I think that better education about this would encourage people to develop healthy relationships with the sun at a young age. Right now the conventional wisdom seems to be "just throw sunscreen at it" / "stay out of the sun unless you are wearing sunscreen" and I think this totally misses the point. My caution is that it's unwise to tell people to avoid sun exposure in total. While sunscreen does seem to be helpful in slowing sun damage, it'd also be unwise to suggest that sunscreen will protect people from overexposure, there isn't really evidence for that. There is a whole body of research. Take a look at some of the studies cited in this article http://m.jabfm.org/content/24/6/735.full http://m.jabfm.org/content/24/6/735.full