I’m reasonably sure former Miss World, Rosanna Davison was not expecting the enormous backlash she received this week following comments made by her in an interview in the Irish Independent, in which she espoused her vegan lifestyle and enthused wildly about a gluten free diet.
Being gluten free made her feel better. It cured her spots. It cured her husband’s Wes’s "rheumatoid arthritis of the knuckles". She is quoted as saying she could “cite research that shows gluten to be the bad guy responsible for a huge range of medical conditions from autism spectrum disorders to schizophrenia to arthritis.”
Up until that point, no one had much issue with her. She is a very pretty woman who clearly is very careful about her own diet – in fairness she would have to be, her brand is intrinsically linked to looking good. And she is of course entitled to sell a cookbook with a collection of low calorie, low carb recipes and I’m sure many people will be in the market for such a book.
Where Rosanna slipped up was when she indulged in nutri-babble – the non-science based attributing of all sorts of properties to various foods that have no basis in fact. I would imagine that she never saw the back lash coming because so many people now speak nutri-babble as a matter of course that they would never expect to be pulled up on it.
It might have all been a storm in a camomile tea cup except when Rosanna was asked by various people on twitter to show the evidence for her claims - rather than doing so or debating the issue, she instead blocked her questioners, who included Consultant Rheumatologists, Registered Dieticians and indeed me. Arthritis Ireland, Journalists, Research experts and even Dr Christian from Cahnnel 4's 'Embarrassing Bodies' series, accused her of dangerous idiocy, of trivialising serious diseases, of a lack of ethics, a lack of expertise and a lack of understanding. Even the Minister for Health Leo Varadkar was retweeting #blamegluten jokes. All in all, she had a pretty bad day.
Was that fair? Well yes, actually. When you are selling a plain old cook book you are entitled to put whatever recipes you like in it. When you purport to be affecting or improving peoples health with such a cookbook – then you have a responsibility to make sure any comments you make are factually correct because you are going to influence people’s behaviour with your advice. It wasn’t all about Rosanna. I believe she became the focus point, for latent anger about quackery, nutri-babble and general claptrap - like homeopathy, which is putting itself out there as a form of therapy, even though it’s been shown irrefutably to be useless nonsense - at best a placebo, at worst a cynical way of parting you from your money.
A healthy diet and lifestyle is of course important for overall health. A diet too rich in certain foods, or indeed deficient in others, is of course bad for you. The best diet for optimum health however is one that is highly varied – not one where you exclude major food groups without just cause. Always beware of those who try and tell you they can cure all your ailments with nutrition or indeed they can treat any condition without a sound evidence based theory to support what they’re doing.
Doctors and Dietitians are regulated. Indeed they have to engage in ongoing education to maintain their registration within their professions. There is sanctions should they fall below a professional standard of care and there is a professional body you can make a complaint to about them should you feel you’ve been mistreated. The same cannot be said of other quasi-health care practitioners. Caveat emptor - when it comes to medical advice.
There’s a good reason why I should never try my hand at modelling and there’s a good reason why Miss World shouldn’t advise people on their health. It’s probably better for everyone we both understand that.
