Have you noticed there are more & more gluten-free foods in the shops nowadays, and how much more expensive they are? It’s a scam, a marketing ploy to scare the gullible into spending more for a “healthy lifestyle”. Sure, there are people that can’t eat gluten but most of us can, quite happily.
Not only that, but gluten-free foods can often be less healthy, as they are more processed, containing more sugar.
Or am I wrong? Have you tried it, what do you think?
I totally agree that they make gluten free foods unnecessarily unhealthy. I can’t eat gluten and I’ve also found I react badly to some preservatives. Goodness knows what’s in some of our foods, but with gluten it was a lifelong problem for me which was steadily getting worse until I discovered the cause aged 44. The GP was sending me for scans to see whether I had an abdominal mass just around the time a friend suggested Coeliacs. I’m still not sure whether I have the latter because I stopped eating the stuff before I was tested.
I think for me it was a combination between either the disease itself or an allergy because it was combined with anaphylaxis at one point when it became very bad. I’m pretty sure that a combination of factors created an acute problem for me and part of that was certain antibiotics.
So I am delighted there are gluten free foods, but it doesn’t completely solve my problem because they are quite often riddled with preservatives and they aren’t too healthy either (too much salt/sugar). These days I prefer to go with a low inflammation diet. But it’s good to have the option to buy something if I am hungry and need lunch rather than having to wait until I get home.
I’m also going alcohol free for health reasons and again very annoying that they add so much sugar to de-alcoholised wines. Real shame they add potassium sorbate to Nozecco. It makes me sick.
I do recommend a number of gluten free options, plus there are many processed foods on the shelf that aren’t in the GF section but are perfectly fine because they don’t have gluten/wheat on the allergen list. Some in the GF section set me off and can ruin my day entirely. I’m sure this has changed in the last few years because when I stopped eating gluten it was amazing how free and healthy I felt. I had thought that it was normal to have a stomach ache after eating pasta and some other foods. I didn’t realise that most people don’t go through this and can eat anything.
I dont think it is a scam.
Coeliac disease is real and it is good that there are gluten free alternatives of products for those people.
I guess they are not as mass manufactured as things like regular bread - so therefore more expensive.
I havent tried any gluten free alternatives - because I have no issue absorbing gluten
I am (unintentionally) on pretty much a raw food diet these days. Just because I feel better on it - its lighter on my stomach and energises me more. I do have some gluten free things (making my own GF bread for one) - again because gluten seems to make me feel worse. I haven’t been diagnosed officially as “Gluten intolerant” but I know my body better than a doctor in this regard.
As an aside…some plant based foods aren’t all that great either, but that’s another conversation.
Yes indeed, I can’t remember whether it was lectins that I was reading about. It’s so hard to get a diagnosis for absorption issues, particularly if it’s one or t’other amino acid.
I agree it can be an expensive rip off and far too many people are self-diagnosing as gluten intolerant when they aren’t really and wasting their money on it
But spare a thought for people like my friend who’s had celiac disease ever since she was a child
It used to be really difficult to get any sort of variety of food, and she mostly had to cook for herself from scratch and prepare separate meals to the rest of her family to be sure and her choices were very limited
I remember once we went to Nando’s and she was ill for four days because we didn’t know they cost their chips in a flour mixture before cooking them
It’s so much nicer for her now and she gets far more choice in supermarkets and restaurants
You have to be very careful with any type of chips because of cross contamination of batter in cooking oil. So chip shop chips are always a risk too. These days a lot of restaurants are using rice or similar flours to get around the GF issue.
Well I’m shocked by how poisonous something like oats can be if the odd grain of wheat got mixed in. And even dirty cooking oil …
But google says just 1 in 100 people are Gluten Intolerant (?)
I don’t think they have any idea how many people are affected and why it’s happening.
I used to be able to eat gluten, although I had reactions they were mild until I was in my 40s after a reaction to antibiotics gluten appeared to poison me. It was awful, I stopped being able to function. It was literally like being poisoned every day after eating until I stopped eating it and all my energy came back. They say that it’s something to do with genetic modification of wheat. Ancient grains are considered to be healthier, but I haven’t been brave enough to try.
I’ve had a DNA health check and it’s just an inherited disorder.
It’s very hard for some people to understand just how much this sort of thing can affect your quality of life and how difficult it is to diagnose. It’s great to meet fellow sufferers who have been on the same journey of disbelief and going back and forth to doctors for years with suspected cancer and all sorts of scans. You get told it’s all in your head by people happily tucking into a mountain of pasta and garlic bread.
Don’t eat gluten - it’s a neurotransmitter blocker:
But yeah, most gluten-free products are just as bad in other ways. Most are from grains, or powders or concoctions that are not considered species appropriate. But some of them can be a way to move away from a typical western/bad diet, so if they help you move in that direction good - but just drop into something like the Paleo Diet - it’s what I recommend to most people because it’s very popular so there are lots of recipes online, hence easy to get into 
Any time a food becomes a popular trend, I’m highly suspicious. For those with celiac disease, gluten free products are a god send. For those who aren’t, I find them over sugary. It’s easy to avoid wheat where I live as we have lots of alternatives–oat cakes, rice cakes, corn cakes…
That scholarly article simply “highlights the need for more exploration and identification of definitive evidence”, it says so itself.
Anyway, there’s a multi billion dollar industry selling food products to people that don’t benefit from them, don’t need them. Gluten-free is one, it’s not aimed at the 1%, it’s the 99% they want to attract.
My view is that if you don’t have problems with gluten it’s better to keep eating it as you miss on some key nutrients by giving up wheat. Wheat is very nutritious. Barley is also very nutritious, regular oats too. I really miss gluten but these days it’s a bit like eating cement for me.
I don’t think people should give up because it’s a fad. It’s a major change and if people worry about too much wheat then rye bread is a low wheat healthier alternative. I’m thinking of making my own sourdough GF bread after seeing a recipe here. I have found I tolerate that better than the regular GF bread.
This is very true for pretty much every brand that we buy of normal food. It’s called marketing.
My mumm, 77, was diagnosed with coeliac as a child, a life long condition. She gets cross with what she says are trendy types hoovering up all the gluten free products in supermarkets and restaurants so she has to go without.
I try and explain they have every right to eat as they see fit but she’s very stuck in her ways and has a concrete reality tunnel.
I don’t eat much packet food or ready meals, I mostly cook from scratch as I am not keen on all the additives or the fact it’s not fresh and prepared by goodness knows who
I’m sorry your mum has to go without, it really isn’t fair. Coeliac disease is a terrible thing to have to manage, and well done on your mum for doing so all these years.
I do wonder though, with the changes to farming, having to feed a growing population (around the world, not just here), that food “interference” has a lot to do with the rising surge in food intolerances.
On the matter of general intolerances and bodily reactions, I am fairly sure that being bombarded with unfamiliar scents is an issue, from things like perfume, furniture polish and those dreadful plug-in scents.
I feel weird around those plug-in scents, like off kilter.
Homes with them in smell sickly and artificial, I’m sure they bombard the immune system.
Fresh air is far superior to a house stinking of vanilla
I’m pretty sure I read that some of these products are carcinogenic, particularly scented candles in poorly ventilated rooms. Research is ongoing on phthalates, aldehydes, 1,4-dichlorobenzene, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, acetone, picric acid, methyl vinyl ketone etc. Some of these chemicals are in shampoos and shower gels (although that is being reduced since focus on the harmful effects was publicised).
There are plenty of studies that have been done on it, though I see that many of these no longer appear in google results.
Read something like the GAPS book (or not - keep eating it if you want to 
) the book has been mentioned a few times on the forum:
It covers gluten.
I agree - but it’s worth realising that the whole ‘food’ industry is about profit, probably less than 1% of companies operating in the space actually care about your health…
