For those who don’t live their lives online, here’s the executive summary. On April 1, celebrity health and wellness influencer Rujuta Diwekar posted a reel pegged ostensibly to a common predicament of the older of her 1.8 million Instagram followers: their children were urging them to include more protein in their diet. In a line that evokes the no-uterus-no-opinion stand on abortion adopted by pro-choice advocates, Diwekar said they should ignore their sons’ advice on food, including protein, collagen, creatine, omega-3, and prebiotics, till such time they were cooking meals for multiple people every day. “Bachha hain, bada hone do [He’s a child, let him grow up],” she signs off.
If the intent was to trigger multiple groups with a single post — the algorithms of social media reward provocative posts with higher engagement, which translates into more followers and, consequently, greater reach/influence, and therefore higher economic benefits via brand deals — Diwekar had hit the sweet spot. With more than 1.8 million views and 10,000-odd shares at the time of writing, her highest numbers in the current calendar year, it can be safely said, Diwekar had “gone viral”.
Within days, if not hours, the pushback started: counter-reels from doctors, qualified nutritionists, trainers, fitness coaches. Television personality Mini Mathur, who recently reinvented herself as a certified women’s health coach and founded Pausitive, an initiative focused on menopause education and care, wrote on Diwekar’s post: “You are a beacon in nutrition… but when YOU tell women their nutritional needs come last… you are putting us decades back. When a son tells his mom she needs evidence based nutritional requirements… we should encourage the debate.”
Not a joke
“Diwekar is a huge celebrity and older people, especially, trust what she says. So, something like this can really backfire,” says Nandita Iyer. She holds an MBBS with a fellowship in applied nutrition, is a health coach and author, most recently, of No Gods, No Gurus: A Radical Guide to Your Wellbeing (Bloomsbury, December 2025). Iyer (@saffrontrail), who upholds nutrition, movement, sleep and stress management as the four pillars of healthcare, put out her rebuttal reel to her 220k followers a few days later, taking umbrage especially with the dismissal of the younger generation, and backing up her points with peer-reviewed studies.
The complication, as Iyer points out, is that on social media, short-cuts — read catchy reels with easy or no-work solutions — will always fly higher than nuanced advisories. In India, battling related issues ranging from undernutrition to obesity, the fallout can be especially unkind.
It is a problem that the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) in Hyderabad, which works under the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) of the Central government’s Ministry of Health, is well aware of. “NIN is on Instagram and other social media as well, with a sizeable following,” says Dr. Subbarao M. Gavaravarapu, head, Nutrition Information, Communication and Health Education at the institute. “But unlike influencers, we don’t only post messages and reels, we share announcements, activities, and cater to broader stakeholder groups. It’s a fact though that our graduates, who are now practitioners, have patients demanding something they’ve seen recommended by an influencer, say creatine or detox foods, and that is a concern because often they have no training.”
Referring to Diwekar’s video, Dr. Gavaravarapu takes exception to the framing of the protein question. “Protein doesn’t help lose weight. Protein-rich foods, in conjunction with complex carbs and physical activity, and restriction of empty calories, can help increase muscle mass,” he points out.
‘Critically assess information’
To be fair, Diwekar, who rose to celebrity as trainer to some of Bollywood’s finest, has a post-graduate qualification in sports science and nutrition from SNDT College, Mumbai (also attended summer school on ‘Future of Foods’ at the University of Potsdam, Germany). Her posts are frequently a mash of sound common sense (carry more underwear in perimenopause), traditional remedies (eat shepu, or dill, for hair health) and local interpretations of established trends, such as superfoods (neem chutney).
Each of them finds resonance and engagement with hundreds of followers every day, which often translates into them taking up the cudgels on Diwekar’s behalf should she be perceived to be under attack — cue, the protein post. Iyer and other rebutters are finding this out, as they get labelled anti-India, anti-ancestral knowledge and the like. (Diwekar herself could not be reached for this story, despite multiple efforts.)
Between the binaries, though, Dr. Gavaravarapu acknowledges that even the conventionally educated may be nutritionally illiterate. To that end, ICMR-NIN has partnered with UNICEF in LetsFixOurFood, a skill-based nutrition literacy programme. Plus, they have just completed the legwork on the first-ever survey across a sample size of 2,00,000 in all States and Union territories for a fine-tuned sense of what India eats and its nutritional issues. “By the end of the year, we look to have actionable information,” he says. “It will inform policy and also our posts.”
Till then, he suggests to critically assess information one encounters on social media. Or, if that’s too hard, use judgment on the influencers to follow.
The writer and editor is based in Bengaluru.
