Rashmi Sinha Featured in NIH Intramural Research Program Blog
Rashmi Sinha, Ph.D., senior investigator in the Metabolic Epidemiology Branch, discusses her research on the health effects and cancer risk associated with red meat in NIH’s Intramural Research Program blog, I Am Intramural. An excerpt is presented below.
When Hippocrates said, “Let food by thy medicine and medicine thy food,” he was on to something. That’s why National Nutrition Month, celebrated every March, calls attention to the important link between health and diet. To commemorate Nutrition Month this year, we spoke with IRP senior investigator Rashmi Sinha, Ph.D., about her efforts to tease out not only which foods help or harm out bodies, but why they do so.
Determining the health effects of different foods has long been a holy grail in research, but with so many variables, our knowledge remains vague at best. Some foods — processed meats, certain fats, sugar — clearly have negative effects when eaten in large amounts, while others like green vegetables and legumes are helpful. Unfortunately, there are a lot of unknowns in between.
Dr. Sinha is bringing order to the table through her epidemiological research into nutrition. Her work focuses primarily on the role of diet in cancer risk and how the microbes that live in our digestive system influence our health. However, where other researchers are satisfied with establishing links between specific foods and certain health risks, Dr. Sinha wants to drill down into the health effects of specific chemicals we ingest at our meals.