When, and Why, Did Everyone Stop Eating Gluten?

[cleanhippie]

Celiac disease is an autoimmune disease in which the ingestion of gluten induces enteropathy, or inflammation of the gut, in genetically susceptible individuals. This destruction of the gut means that nutrients cannot be absorbed, leading to a variety of clinical symptoms: anemia due to the lack of iron, atherosclerosis due to the lack of calcium, failure to thrive in children, and GI stress, among others.

Gluten is the primary protein component of wheat – it is what gives breads their delicious chewy texture. The only known cure for celiac disease is complete elimination of gluten from the diet – so no pizza, bagels, pasta, pancakes, waffles, doughnuts, cookies, soy sauce (it has wheat in it), licorice (ditto) … you get the idea. Even communion wafers are verboten.

Although this is obviously extremely onerous on many levels, unlike any drug regimen it is 100 percent effective and free of side effects. Ingestion of gluten puts celiacs at risk for developing other autoimmune diseases and lymphomas.

--snip--

Celiac disease is hardly the beginning and end of this story. Dermatitis herpetiformis is a rash that results when gluten induces an autoimmune response in the skin rather than the gut, and there is evidence that gluten can provoke a similar autoimmune response in the brain as well1.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=when-and-why-did-everyone-stop-eati-2011-05-10

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For more than 30 years, I suffered from an unexplainable skin rash that came and went, until in 2002, a dermatologist walked in and said "Oh, I know what that is..." Fortunately, for my condition, there is a medication that blocks the autoimmune response in my skin, and I can, for the most part, eat gluten products. When I do decrease or eliminate it gluten, I do feel much better, but I brew my own beer, and if I can't drink good craft beer, life just isn't worth living, IMO. YMMV.

[Rambis]

1. Just FYI

http://www.glutenfreebeerfestival.com/

Guinness and Smithwicks do not effect my brother who is celiac-
:toast:

[trotsky]

3. Guinness and Smithwicks are both made with barley.

So either your brother does not really have Celiac's, or he doesn't really drink those.

[cleanhippie]

7. Cool! Thanks!

[elfin]

2. My neighbor self diagnosed herself with fibromyalgia

But due to lack of health insurance was waiting to see if she absolutely HAD to see a doc.

Wile listening to public radio, heard someone talking about fibro and how gluten free might help.

She thought she would give it a good try before starting medical rounds.

Guess what -- in a few weeks her symptoms of debilitating pain and fatigue were 90% gone and she has remained gluten free for about 5 years.

Not all fibro sufferers have this result, but it worked for her.

I think it is just plain healthier for many reasons. I have cut back considerably and feel better in general.

[Speck Tater]

4. Some people are just glutens for PUNishment.

But seriously, preoccupation with eating healthy is now considered an eating disorder.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Stossel/story?id=5735592&page=1
http://www.naturalnews.com/029098_orthorexia_mental_disorder.html

[izquierdista]

6. Stossel?

Not going to click that link -- Stossel is a viewing disorder.

[cleanhippie]

8. Good one. But it is not "eating healty" that is the disorder, its the OCD that manifests

in "eating healthy."

[Hissyspit]

11. John Stossel??

Stossel is a corporate/right-wing propagandist/spin artist of the highest (lowest) order.

[Speck Tater]

14. Since nobody seems to like Stossel

There are plenty of links to the story from other sources. Just google health food eating disorders for a long list.

[HuckleB]

15. What do those incredibly-out-of context bites from lame sources have to do with the OP?

Yeah, Stossel? Really? NaturalNews.com? Are you friggin' serious?

[valerief]

5. I love Mary's Gone Crackers and I don't have a problem with gluten.

http://www.marysgonecrackers.com/ns/intro.php

[SidDithers]

9. K&R. Thanks for posting...

My daughter was diagnosed with Celiac (by intestinal biopsy) almost 8 years ago. She's now 13 and is a normal kid, but it took us almost 3 years to get a diagnosis. We knew something wasn't right. She fatigued almost immediately with any activity, she wasn't growing, had a distended tummy and didn't get a haircut until she was almost 4 years old. I don't think our family doc even knew to look for it, but finally a pediatrician began to suspect.

It's a lot more visible now, and I think diagnoses are much more likely to be done quickly.

Sid

[Rambis]

10. He usally drinks Green's or Bard's Tale

http://www.glutenfreebeers.co.uk/

http://www.bardsbeer.com/

[glinda]

12. Our grocery store health food section has 75% gluten free stuff and it bothers me.

[SheilaT]

13. In part because people have been led

to believe that practically everyone is gluten intolerant.

Which simply isn't true. Probably most people are fully gluten tolerant, but there's always a high factor of the Disease of The Week thinking.

A while back I was staying with a friend whose husband was gluten intolerant, and one meal fixed was with a gluten-free macaroni that was so nasty. Yuck. It seems to me to be a lot easier to go without entirely than to try to eat some god-awful substitute. Just like I don't get vegetarians who constantly eat fake meat of some kind. If you're a vegetarian, just eat like one.

[eppur_se_muova]

16. Ummm ... macaroni is made from durum wheat, which is *especially* high in gluten.

Seems like the worst possible choice for a gluten-free product. Sort of like fat-free bacon, or sugar-free syrup -- it just isn't going to resemble the authentic item much.

[gkhouston]

17. Exactly -- why not make the dish with rice, instead? n/t

[semillama]

20. Fat-free bacon?

Them's fightin' words!

[astral]

21. Now, there are gluten-free pastas, even macaroni.

There are gluten-free substitutes for many things, they often take some 'getting used to,' however.

[nebenaube]

18. Not really, they just cooked it wrong...

My wife has issues with gluten and I'm sorry but this 'condition' is real. Even MSG gives her nasty headaches. After a few years without any pasta dishes, one finally learns how to cook the gluten free pasta without reducing it to mush; simply because one eventually gets tired of beans and/or rice and potatoes as a side dish.

[SheilaT]

19. How about veggies?

Perhaps I don't have sufficient sympathy, because I have no food allergies or intolerance issues -- although there are plenty of things I don't like and therefore don't eat.

But if I had issues with gluten or any other kind of food, I'd just sigh and go with what I could eat.

I really don't understand people who know they will have some kind of bad reaction to some kind of food, and eat it anyway.

[astral]

22. I tried to go gluten-free for about six months.

This was because I THOUGHT my problem was gluten, when I had some very serious skin rashes going on that came out of nowhere. What I learned from this experience was, (I later found out my problem wasn't gluten after all) it is a lot of work to go gluten-free 100%, and from what I had read, if you must go gluten-free, you have to do it 100%. So I learned the many names for gluten, the surprising places it is 'hidden' in, and, as a side-effect, I learned that having to pay attention to every single thing I ate every single day had me eating ALOT more healthier. Simple food, because anything that was in a package with a label on it that said "ingredients" HAD to be read, and of course I learned I really did need to keep a pair of reading glasses on hand at the grocery store.

After my awakening that I was, in fact, NOT gluten-intolerant, or whateve the term would be, I came away believing that avoiding or at least severely-limiting gluten has got to be a healthy health habit for normal people too.

And, having to eat SIMPLE HEALTHY FOOD made me really realize that it does not cost more to eat healthy, it costs LESS.