
Backlash has begun against gluten-free dieters - cgtyoder
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/backlash-has-begun-against-gluten-free-dieters/2014/07/06/61953aba-f7be-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html?wpsrc=AG0003357
======
brinker
The rise of gluten-free dieting as a fad has some interesting effects for
people who actually have celiac disease or gluten sensitivity. On the one
hand, increased awareness has made gluten-free food more available, on the
other, the stigma against people eating gluten-free has risen. So people who
have an actual medical reason not to eat gluten get lumped into a fad diet
group.

I have a friend with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. In recent years several studies
have found a potential connection between Hashimoto's and celiac disease (it
is still being actively studied, and the link is not conclusive), and so some
doctors are beginning to suggest that people with Hashimoto's remove gluten
from their diet. My friend did, and sure enough saw some thyroid improvement
afterward. She is now entirely gluten free (and has been for over a year), and
is often irritated at people judging or questioning her gluten-free diet
because they immediately assume it is nothing more than capitulation to an
idiotic fad.

~~~
pessimizer
>She is now entirely gluten free (and has been for over a year), and is often
irritated at people judging or questioning her gluten-free diet because they
immediately assume it is nothing more than capitulation to an idiotic fad.

She shouldn't be, because 99 times out of 100, it is nothing more than that.
It's a fine fad, though, because it doesn't harm the sensitive dears who have
taken it up, and it brings a massive array of options for people whose diets
were extremely limited before.

If somebody can come up with an anti-peanut dust fad, I'd support that too.

~~~
yellowapple
The issue, though, is when restaurants, grocers, etc. mistake a legitimate
medical condition with a trendy fad diet and not take one's gluten-free
requirements seriously (e.g. not paying attention to sources of gluten cross-
contamination, or not paying attention to which ingredients actually have
gluten). They _should_ be erring on the safe side and assuming that all
requests for gluten-free are due to a medical condition requiring it, but when
the number of gluten-free fad dieters vastly exceeds the number of people who
actually _need_ a gluten-free diet, the likelihood of safe-side erring
decreases without some other reason (like stronger requirements for "gluten-
free" foods, including both ingredient _and_ preparation standards).

------
mark_l_watson
The anti-gluten free diet people drive me nuts! No one is forcing anyone to go
gluten free.

I had dinner last night with friends, one of who has had really bad allergies
for many years. Really bad. Starting a year ago, her doctor started removing
things from her environment to see what might be causing the problem. You
guessed it: when gluten was removed from her diet her allergies cleared up
within a month.

My wife and I eat mostly gluten free because we believe that modern wheat
(which is really a different food now) causes inflammation in some people. I
spend zero time trying to get anyone else to go gluten free, because except
for my family I don't much care what other people eat.

So, if you like wheat products, enjoy!

BTW, you have not seen the new documentary "Fed Up" about the food industry
then please do so. This is the movie the food industry (super powerful lobby
in the USA, probably even more clout than the defense industry) does not want
to see, so you may have to exert extra effort to find it playing.

~~~
hnnewguy
> _This is the movie the food industry_

The "food industry"? You mean the same one that's slapping "gluten free"
labels on anything and everything, while upping the price to take advantage of
all these fad followers?

Yeah, I'm sure they are devastated. This is a food marketers dream.

~~~
mark_l_watson
The way to go gluten free is to make your own food, mainly fresh vegetables,
fruit, and some high quality meat. Maybe it is just my tastes, but getting
carbohydrates from cauliflower, carrots, yams, etc. is just tastier.

But yes, I agree with you that the food industrial complex has jumped all over
the gluten free trend.

~~~
andylei
> fresh vegetables, fruit, and some high quality meat

the food industry sells you all of those things...

~~~
yellowapple
That's because "the food industry" is a ridiculously-nebulous term, kind of
like "terrorism". It's vague to the point of being misleading, since it ends
up including big and small players alike without further qualification (and at
that point, you might as well be picking a more descriptive term).

------
headstorm
In the months since I was diagnosed with celiac disease, I have almost
eliminated restaurant meals from my lifestyle. Regardless of whether the wait
staff are visibly hostile toward my request for gluten-free food, I usually
become sick after the rare occasion when I do eat out. I know that I should
eliminate restaurants entirely but it's difficult to wholly pull away from the
shared experience of food with friends.

Far more frustrating is the experience of shopping in the grocery store.
Though I've been told by a dozen people that I have it so good since there are
so many gluten-free foods, easily 4 out of every 5 foods labeled as gluten-
free also mention in fine print that they are manufactured in a facility that
processes wheat, which is unsafe for celiac sufferers. Even the upcoming FDA
standard of <20 ppm may be enough to cause problems in those with celiac
disease.

It is a wonderful thing that strictly avoiding gluten has mostly ended the
constant migraines of the past 15 years that inspired my username here. Though
it's a surprise whenever I get glutened and the migraine returns with a
vengeance.

~~~
VLM
"I have almost eliminated restaurant meals from my lifestyle"

My son has medically diagnosed celiac and we've had excellent luck at salad
bars and grilled food (steak dinner hold the garlic bread) and also buffets.

The, uh, explosive effect out both ends, often simultaneously, is rather
noticeable so we're pretty confident the food is "clean" and have had pretty
good results.

Avoiding soy sauce seems harder than avoiding wheat. You know whats in soy
sauce other than soy, right?

On one hand, the fad is cool because there's megatons of doubly fake food
available at high expense, where its fake processed food to begin with, then
fake - fake food because they took the wheat out. So its a fake version of
fake food. The problem is lets be blunt here, it tastes pretty awful and its
not good for you anyway. You wanna go GF my advice is eat a salad or a steak
not an awful simulation of fake wonder bread that tastes like compressed
sawdust mixed with potato peelings. I don't even have words to describe the
fake GF brownie mix my wife made one time, warm road tar mixed with sand and
dog droppings? You wanna eat something unhealthy for desert get a quart of
organic fruit juice and a home ice cream maker and make a slushy, if you're
going to eat something unhealthy at least let it taste good.

I've had this argument quite a few times with my son which when paraphrased is
something like, dad why do we have to eat this icky fake lasagna with icky
fake garlic bread and then have icky fake apple pie when I loved the grilled
homemade honey mustard chicken breasts and a light salad from last night, dad?
Dad's homemade stir fries are awesome how come we're stuck eating burgers on
icky fake buns tonight? (you can make stir fries without soy sauce...)

~~~
headstorm
I know that most soy sauces have wheat in them.

Maybe once I've had more time post-diagnosis, I'll trust salad bars again, but
shortly after my biopsy confirmed that I have celiac, I ate at a salad bar and
was sick for days.

Far more insidious and scary are lentils, which should be fine, but are often
processed with barley, or anything in the bulk section of the grocery store.
My wallet certainly wishes that I could buy from bulk bins again.

------
TheLoneWolfling
The biggest problem with the fad of people going on gluten-free diets?

It means that people become careless - when they encounter someone who
actually has celiac disease, they are less likely to treat it seriously.

(Case in point: the guy at the grocer's who repeatedly insisted to a celiac
friend of mine that durum semolina pasta was gluten-free.)

~~~
bedhead
Yes. My 6 y/o son has celiac and this is by far the biggest issue now. The
awareness of what gluten actually is is nice, but the default assumption is
now that it's someone who's voluntarily dieting, which can create some bad
situations. We always make it a point at restaurants to not simply inquire
about GF, but emphasize that our son has celiac in the hopes that they think,
"Oh, this isn't some lame fad dieter, I need to really ask the chef about
this."

------
rjsamson
Interestingly all the latest research has been pointing to another culprit
(FODMAPs) in those claiming non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Some relevant
links:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23648697](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23648697)

[http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/05/gluten_sensitiv...](http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/05/gluten_sensitivity_may_not_exist.html)

------
ctdonath
Fascinating relevant article: [http://www.motherjones.com/tom-
philpott/2014/02/toms-kitchen...](http://www.motherjones.com/tom-
philpott/2014/02/toms-kitchen-100-whole-wheat-bread-doesnt-suck-and-pretty-
easy)

TL;DR - The baking industry is using techniques which cause bread to rise so
fast that the yeast does not have time to process the gluten.
Slower/traditional techniques & rise-times do. The apparent rise in "gluten
sensitivity" is consequential to the change from reducing bread rise times
from hours to minutes; those who were sensitive (not to the degree of Celiac
sufferers) were not exposed to gluten so much in the past because rise times
gave yeast a chance to eliminate the problem. Those who are now "gluten
sensitive" should try the very slow bread recipe in the article (and everyone
else too, it's delicious).

~~~
trebor
> Those who are now "gluten sensitive" should try the very slow bread recipe
> in the article (and everyone else too, it's delicious).

This is a bad idea. If the gluten sensitive individual, which you obviously
don't believe in, is having an autoimmune reaction the immune system will kick
in. IIRC, it can kick in for 5ng of active material, roughly the same amount
of active agent in a vaccine, and will remain active for months.

~~~
ctdonath
_which you obviously don 't believe in_

Huh? I'm relaying a way for the gluten sensitive to remove gluten using
classic methods to avoid the autoimmune reaction, observing that modern rapid-
rise baking leaves an overwhelming amount of gluten intact. Hardly a statement
of "I don't believe in it". The information may be imperfect as I'm presenting
it; I'm presenting suggestions & insights, not peer-reviewed research of
encyclopedic depth.

------
shawndumas
Don't lump all the "me too" gluten-free'ers together. Yes, some are glomming
on to a fad, but just because you are not a cileac dosen't mean you're silly
for going gluten-free (GF).

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) -- a common functional gastrointestinal
disorder (FGID) affecting one in seven -- has been shown to be exacerbated by
FODMAPs[1][2] in wheat. It's easy to avoid FODMAPs by going GF and thus suffer
less from IBS.

A lot of IBS suffers are just not explaining that they are avoiding FODMAPs by
going GF.

\----

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FODMAP](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FODMAP)

[2]:
[http://www.med.monash.edu/cecs/gastro/fodmap/](http://www.med.monash.edu/cecs/gastro/fodmap/)

------
drcode
> “In the ’50s, everyone had ulcers”

Yeah, because we hadn't discovered H Pylori as a causative agent and developed
treatments.

> "Then, it was back problems"

Because manual labor in blue collar work was a lot more common back then.

~~~
DanBC
Non specific lower back pain used to be treated with bed rest and firmer
mattresses.

Now we know those are both bad things. When you lie on your bed you want to be
able to slide your hand, with a little bit of effort, under your spine at your
lower back.

We also know that carefully taking pain relief and keeping the back moving
helps, as does specific exercise to strengthen the muscles.

Plenty of white collar workers have non specific lower back pain and spending
hundreds of dollars on chairs may help, but exercise will help more.

------
dfxm12
My roommate called gluten free food "liberal bullshit" when he saw me eating
(corn) tortilla chips marked as gluten free. He said his bag of chips tastes
better, even though his was gluten free too!

There is a convergence of fad diets - gluten free and no carb. Going gluten
free is also very compatible with a paleo diet. You can do two or three fad
diets at the same time! Was there this much backlash to other fad diets like
south beach or Atkins? I really can't recall...

Looking back at what I eat all week, outside of beer and the odd slice of
pizza here and there. My diet is basically gluten free and I'm not even
trying. Many "gluten free" bashers might be surprised to learn the same thing!

~~~
existencebox
Personally? Yes, fad diets have always been this annoying. I admittedly have
some... interesting extended family who decides that each fad diet/medical
practice is EXACTLY what applies to their children at that moment, and with a
doctor in my part of the family, we get to hear _all_ about it. (before long
I'm half expecting her to call up ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE that they all have
dysentery after a bad evening of taco bell.)

Should "the fandom ruin it for everyone"? No, probably not. But they certainly
make it hard not not want to bang your head against something really hard. I
don't care about liberal bullshit, conservative bullshit, I just care about
bullshit. And if your best reason for being sure that you have something is
"my symptoms match what the man on fox news told me about so I self
diagnosed"... When I figure out how to type out the teeth grinding noise that
sentence just made me create, I'll update this.

------
incision
Foolishness on multiple fronts.

It's just a matter of time, the nice thing about fads is that they disappear
even faster than they appear in the first place. Ten years ago 'atkins'
vanished overnight and it looks like 'gluten free' has already peaked [1].

Also, while were on the topic of diet gripes - mine is vegetarianism. I've
been a vegetarian my entire life and faced all the same sort of nonsense as it
has risen in popularity. Thankfully, I can pretty easily smell meats and
wouldn't face anything worst than indigestion for accidentally eating some.

1:
[http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q='gluten%20free'%2C%20...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q='gluten%20free'%2C%20'atkins%20diet'&cmpt=q)

------
batbomb
What is more strange is actually having other food allergies. I have bad Oral
Allergy Syndrome, and eating various things like cantaloupe, bananas, avocado,
grapes (and wine), among other things, make me sick, some worse than others.
Included with that is a mild latex allergy.

So people, especially health food nuts,tend to thing I'm a weird, unhealthy
bitch when I tell them I can't eat banana or fruit salad. I sucked it up
recently and ate a few bananas and two days in a row had to keep myself from
vomiting. Same with wine: I've had a single glass of wine before and vomited
later that night. Avocado doesn't give me the indigestion but it does make my
mouth and throat very itchy, but I still tend to eat it.

------
mobiuscog
People are different - who guessed.

The two main problems are:

1) Popular science & media don't understand how the gut works enough to
actually give beneficial advice en-masse.

2) The 'Fad' is the food industry selling even more processed junk under the
moniker of 'Gluten Free' in the same way that 'Low Fat' and 'Sugar Free' foods
are often worse overall nutritionally than those they replace.

As usual, the elephant in the room is how there's no real downside to a sugar-
free diet, but the food industry don't want that as food isn't as addictive.

------
pjc50
A hypothesis I saw on HN a while ago about the rise in gluten intolerance(+)
was that it was actually something else: some other change in the protein
composition of wheat (due to GM or hybridization) or its chemical composition
after processing is what people are allergic to.

(+)Or at least people reporting health benefits after cutting gluten, and
therefore wheat, out of their diet.

Edit: meanwhile someone has posted it to this thread
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8009766](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8009766)

------
badman_ting
I find this suspicion suspicious. I know that some people are melodramatic
about it, but why can't people just have their food without gluten if they
don't want it? Nobody ever backlashed against the anti-MSG thing, and that was
arguably way dumber.

On the other hand, I have heard that this has resulted in lowering of
standards for handling gluten, and people who are severely allergic are being
exposed to small amounts, while people without celiac don't notice those small
amounts. So, that's bad.

~~~
igrekel
Yes, these lowering standards cause by people not really allergic is a
problem.

I have the same problem with my son having multiple allergies (real severe
ones) is that the employees think when you say you're allergic that your just
being fussy and that just removing something from the top of the dish is OK.

But in any case, it hard to trust restaurants at all on these matters.

------
exelius
Much of the "increased energy levels" that people report from excluding gluten
probably has to do with the fact that gluten elimination diets often end up
having a lower glycemic index. Most gluten sources are high in carbohydrates,
specifically _processed_ carbohydrates. Eating lots of processed carbohydrates
spikes your blood sugar giving you short-term energy, but makes you tired once
the sugar is removed from your blood stream.

Gluten free diets often end up being higher in raw foods simply out of
convenience, since most of the gluten free food items you can buy at the store
are things like nuts, vegetables and the like. While gluten free dieting may
be a fad that is annoying to your friends, the end result is that the majority
of food people avoid is stuff they probably shouldn't eat that much of in the
first place.

~~~
bryanlarsen
I think the effect you describe is the primary reason why gluten-free is so
effective for most (but definitely not all) people. Replacing a cookie with a
piece of fruit is a good idea no matter what diet you're on.

The gluten free fad has made it so easy to find gluten-free cookies et al that
the effect you describe much less significant.

------
tiatia
Gluten destroyed my life and nearly killed me in the end (DH). My live could
have been very different with a gluten free diet. I have become very septic
about it in general

[http://perfecthealthdiet.com/category/toxins-and-
toxicity/wh...](http://perfecthealthdiet.com/category/toxins-and-
toxicity/wheat-grains/) [http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2010/09/wheat-and-
obesity-more-...](http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2010/09/wheat-and-obesity-more-
from-the-china-study/)

------
cmsj
Forget about words like "fad" and "backlash". Data. That's all that matters. I
am not up on the research, but I would at least like to see articles like this
talk to people who are, instead of talking to random people who have no
fucking clue what they're talking about :)

(Edit: and by "data", I mean things like, does reducing/eliminating gluten, or
more likely, all sugar/carbs, from a diet, actually reduce productivity-
sapping drowsiness? does it actually reduce weight by not stimulating insulin,
etc.)

------
j_s
The backlash comes when party guests insist on a gluten-free option, then
decide that a slice of cake 'won't hurt'. So frustrating!

------
ollysb
Gluten free hasn't really hit Europe in the same way so I was really amazed
when I tried a gluten free pizza for the first time a couple of weeks ago.
Eating half a pizza and not having a dough-baby afterwards was quite a
revelation. Can't say I'll be going gluten free but I can see how it would be
a nice option to have on the menu.

~~~
officialjunk
oh but it has. in spain and italy, for example, they test kids in school for
gluten because so much of their regular diet contains gluten. this mandatory
testing has been going on for many years. even the mcdonalds in those
countries have gluten free options. we are not at that point yet, here in the
us.

what we have going on that europe doesn't are the growing number of people
doing it voluntarily/for fun.

------
dsjoerg
Article title is not supported by the article, unless you can honestly count
two cranky people as the beginning of a backlash.

------
jack-r-abbit
My house would welcome a new fad for soy-free foods. But nobody gives a crap
about soy being in everything. EVERYTHING. Of course, we often get handed the
gluten-free menu when we ask about soy-free options. And I suspect that is
because of the gluten-free fad.

------
infiniteseeker
All I know is, my acne went away when I stopped eating wheat. Correlation !=
causation and all that but I aint going back because clear skin > bread. (I do
miss pizza once in a while)

~~~
ohhoe
Amy's makes rice crust pizza that's super good!

------
skittles
There's not enough science to support either side in this debate. My guess is
that a small percentage of people actually have a gluten intolerance. I also
think that modern wheat can cause inflammation and gut problems. Mostly I
think that reducing carbohydrates benefits anyone that isn't very active
(which includes most Americans). The unfortunate truth is that the food
industry is now producing more gluten-free alternatives (breads, beers, etc.),
and these alternatives create a bigger insulin response than the originals.

------
VLM
No spectrum discussion? At all? Just stereotypical hacker news pure binary 1
and 0 thinking? That's so sad.

There are people who get sick if you share gluten contaminated dishes or
practically even just sniff the stuff. Toward the other end of the spectrum my
medically diagnosed son doesn't explode out both ends unless he eats at least
a visible amount like about a bite, kids will be kids and a stolen classmates
cookie will make him puke if he eats the whole thing maybe half the time,
maybe a little more, but sometimes especially when he was little he would
shock us, swap sandwiches with some kid and only have diarrhea the next day no
puking. Anyway, further along I feel seriously uncomfortably "blah" from too
much bread or beer or pizza or baked stuff in general although I'm not
diagnosed and being mostly paleo I rarely eat that junk anyway, and then
there's the unaffected people.

The backlash against people who don't like feeling "blah" but can eat an oreo
without vomiting is pretty annoying. So I'll eat GF with my son, in familial
solidarity if nothing else, but if I see a really tasty piece of cake and my
son doesn't mind if I eat it in front of him ... it would be cruel if he
wanted to eat it too, but if he is full and doesn't care, he's about as
libertarian as his dad, so no problemo, I'll eat the cake. So here I am,
everyone dogpile on VLM because I'm (sorta) GF but I'm "that guy" who will
sometimes eat a slice of cake or drink A beer, despite being GF. If that gives
some 3rd party, whom I do not care about, a sad panda face, well, I can't say
as I feel responsible for their feelings or really care at all beyond "too bad
for them" or "hope you enjoy your pout and crying fit as much as I'm enjoying
my annual slice of garlic bread".

Its like the backlash against people who eat fast food with a diet coke. Hey,
if I don't want to drink any more corn syrup than necessary, so I don't,
that's just too bad for you if you don't like what I'm doing. Have a nice pout
while the adults eat, that's about all I can say. Try not to dehydrate
yourself too severely by all the crying.

I'm about the same WRT my diet also being about 95% or so paleo. So I almost
never eat cookies but I did eat a few at that 4th of July party. If what I ate
rabidly infuriates you, I'm sad to report I don't give a F, hope you enjoy
your rage because I don't care about your rage. I've got a little troll in me
and next time I eat a cookie will probably be at a Christmas party, and I'll
be sure to eat it right in front of you, I admit I'm not perfect and it is
kind of funny to watch. I suspect this trolling is a large part of gluten-
sorta-tolerant people eating gluten food in front of arrogant people just to
make their brains explode in rage.

Some business or life advice that goes far beyond diet, is if you decide you
will let other people take control of you, don't be surprised if they pull
your chain a bit for fun as a semi-polite reminder that's a pretty stupid way
to go thru life.

------
drunkcatsdgaf
wat?

