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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.
Your Favourite Supermarket Foods Might Be Upping Your Cancer Risk
More evidence, if needed, is piling up that it is time we eat food with ingredients that we recognise as edible.
A large cohort study conducted by researchers at Sorbonne in Paris has unearthed “consistent and strong” evidence that consuming ultra-processed foods may increase the likelihood of cancer. Ultra-processed foods include all the foods we generally like — pot noodles, shelf meals, cakes, cookies, confectionery — all of which contain a whole host of preservatives, additives, colourings and flavourings, as well as high levels of sugar, fats and salt.
The study is not to be taken lightly; it looked at health records and eating habits of as many as 105,000 adults and registered their intake of more than 3,300 different foods. The paper published in the BMJ reports that a 10 per cent increase in consumption of processed foods was linked to nearly 12 per cent increase in cancers of some kind.
It is to be noted here that processed foods have earlier been strongly linked to obesity but the connections with cancer are relatively new. Lead author of the study Mathilde Touvier says though we need not be “alarmist” the results are “quite compelling”.
It is already known that ultra-processed foods are not your nutritionist’s favourite because the processing literally removes all nutrients from the food. But is the low nutrient value the reason for the increase in cancer risk? Probably not. According to the researchers, it might well be a ‘cocktail effect’ — a result of the high doses of salt and sugar in the processed foods as well as the effect of the preservatives and additives used. But they need more research to figure out the exact reasons for the rise in risk. The researchers now have huge data on additives used in specific foods and over the years they hope to quantify the exposure to these additives and derive more concrete results.
That may well happen. But if the present results are any indication, it is time for us to simply listen to our grandmothers.
