How the (food) fear spreads

Recently a newspaper headline screamed “South India worst hit by diabetes; rice to be blamed?” Now I would have learnt in a journalism school that it’s exactly this kind of “statement” that makes a headline. (a). It is Clear, you are encouraged to not be clever, (b) It is Relevant to a rice eating nation, something which google results can grab and (c) It Stirs the reader emotionally. ‘Oh no! I should really not eat that thairsadham afterall.’ Chalo toh full marks to the report. Well done!
The truth is that most of us read “news” like this – headlines to headlines. We don’t bother reading the actual report, we are in a rush and we just want to quickly glance through what’s happening world over, it makes us feel smart, intelligent and “with it”.  So the smart, intelligent and cool people that we are, we quickly tell ourselves and everyone around us that rice is bad, fattening and now “research” has “proved” that it’s the “leading cause” of “diabetes”.
And everyone is only too eager to believe all this. Fear sells like hot cakes, common sense is tough to sell. So if you were to read the report in detail, prevalence of diabetes in Kerala (8.83%), Andhra Pradesh (7.24%) is lower than Tamil Nadu (11.76%). The national average is 7.1% and Himachal (6.06%), Uttarakhand (5.91%) and Bihar (4.88%) are much lower than the national average. But here is the thing - these states are predominantly rice-eating states. And what about Maharashtra? Poha, ghavan, pej, dahibhat, waranbhat, masalebhat, modak - we eat rice in every form and in every course of our meal. So we must be high on this list, right? Nope, its 3.56%, second lowest in the country.
So why didn’t the headline read, ‘eating rice is great for diabetes?’ Or that ‘there is no link between rice and diabetes (even within this study design)?’ And as a reader and for all your quest of science, research, GK, you were just (a) clueless that these Himalayan regions and Bihar are indeed rice eating and (b) you have an inherent ignorance about homegrown food wisdom.
You shouldn’t be asking me on twitter/ FB/ Open days whether you can eat Bissebelle, thairsadham, dal-rice, etc. You should ask yourself why would I give up on my rich rice eating culture because of some “eye grabbing” headline. Why should I bother with what a “screening” has to say about rice and diabetes when it doesn’t even consider the figures from other rice eating states? Why do these kind of reports appear on the day or the week when some “diabetes free” or “healthy” rice is being launched?
P.S: This particular “screening” was undertaken by the National programme for prevention and control of Cancer, Diabetes, CVD and Stroke (NPCDCS). There is no mention of how many people they spoke to, what the study design was and what factors they looked at. The study was apparently done on people above 30, pregnant women and TB patients. Even then, was it across age groups, income groups and ethnic groups? Like all such “studies” it is concluded with this line – “The screening report is important but we have to conduct further study and sampling of screening data on the basis of age, socioeconomic conditions and pre-existing health problems to validate rise in Diabetes cases among the South Indians”. 
Coming next - The truth about Coconut :-)