In “Unraveling The Gluten-Free Trend,” published in EatingWell magazine in May 2014, FERN editor-in-chief Sam Fromartz investigates the science and controversy behind the “gluten-free” craze. He draws on the latest medical research to explain what we really know about gluten’s health effects, and how much of what we think we know might be hype. The story focuses on the emerging research around “gluten sensitivity,” which, as Fromartz shows, isn’t well understood, and thus is prone to conjecture.

While writing his most recent book, In Search of the Perfect Loaf: A Homebaker’s Odyssey, Fromartz traveled the world studying bread baking and the history of our relationship with this ancient, staple food. It’s a relationship that has become more complicated, though, as a growing number of people see gluten in bread and other products as the source of a wide variety of health problems.

EatingWell has a print circulation of 500,000 and reaches 1.8 million readers per month. The story reached 27,000 on Facebook and roughly 900,000 Twitter followers, and remains in the top 20 most popular stories on the EatingWell site.