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Bangalore-based Rashmi Vasudeva's journalism has appeared in many Indian and international publications over the past decade. A features writer with over nine years of experience heading a health and fitness supplement in a mainstream Indian newspaper, her niche areas include health, wellness, fitness, food, nutrition and Indian classical Arts.
Her articles have appeared in various publications including Mint-Wall Street Journal, The Hindu, Deccan Herald (mainstream South Indian newspaper), Smart Life (Health magazine from the Malayala Manorama Group of publications), YourStory (India's media technology platform for entrepreneurs), Avantika (a noir arts and theatre magazine), ZDF (a German public broadcasting company) and others.
In 2006, she was awarded the British Print-Chevening scholarship to pursue a short-term course in new-age journalism at the University of Westminster, U.K. With a double Masters in Globalisation and Media Studies from Aarhus Universitet (Denmark), University of Amsterdam and Swansea University in Wales, U.K., she has also dabbled in academics, travel writing and socio-cultural studies. Mother to a frisky toddler, she hums 'wheels on the bus' while working and keeps a beady eye on the aforementioned toddler's antics.
Is Gluten The Bugbear Of Our Times? And Why Are Scientists Playing Catch-Up?
Is gluten the fanciest manufactured bugbear of our times? It certainly appears so, considering how scientific backlash against blindly going gluten-free is gaining momentum.
Scientists are taking note of how alarmist the gluten-free propaganda is becoming and how out of sorts it is with the available data. At its best, data is indeterminate; at its worst, like in the case of gluten’s relation to inflammation, heart disease and cancer, it is plain shaky.
Author James Hamblin snarks his way through a mini-history of gluten obsession and fascinatingly narrates how gluten-free diets jumped out of bestselling "science" tomes and into the public mindscape. It soon outran sober scientific advice to stand at the forefront of glossies, celebrity-endorsements and Google search results for "diets that work".
In the latest such "backlash" study, which the author terms to be a "stern admonition" from scientists, researchers from Harvard and Columbia have concluded that gluten does not cause heart disease, and people without celiac disease “should not be encouraged” to go gluten-free. The study also discovered that people who go gluten-free (without being medically prescribed to do so) might actually be putting themselves at an increased risk of heart disease.
The question to ask here is why are studies to establish/disprove links between gluten and major diseases being conducted in the first place? The answer, provided by the lead researcher, is illuminating: “In talking to patients...(there's) an important difference between saying that there’s no proof that gluten has health effects...and saying that there is proof that gluten has no health effects in the general population.”
The article raises important questions about whether it is science’s duty to “go where the public is interested and provide sound analysis”, or whether this is too vicious a cycle of “buying and belief” that science can never catch up, while bugbears like gluten run miles ahead with followers in tow.
