Kombuchat

To those with Celiac’s, the gluten-intolerant, and gluten-free dieters, Long Island now has many places offering gluten-free baked goods, meals, and groceries.

Gluten-free options are becoming more widely available on Long Island. Most supermarkets and health-food stores have sizable gluten-free sections, and more and more restaurants offer gluten-free pastas, pizzas and bread.

For markets, there’s Eat Good Gluten Free Market as well as Rising Tide Natural Market and Jandi’s Natural Market.

Bare Naked Bakery, Wild Flours and others serve gluten-free baked goods.

gluten-free zucchini bread — YUM

And a variety of restaurants have gluten free options on their menu.

If you live in the Long Island area, check it out!

Gluten free is the hottest health craze, with almost every wheat product in the market now having a gluten-free alternative. Breads, pastas, cakes, and even condiments are being made gluten-free.

But is it all hype?

According to the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness, “[a]bout 1 percent of the American population suffers from celiac disease”, where your body actually can’t consume gluten.

An equal and possibly slightly larger percentage of Americans are gluten-intolerant, where gluten can cause digestive discomfort and IBS-like symptoms.

However, many people consuming gluten-free products neither have Celiac’s nor are they gluten-intolerant.

Daniel Leffler, director of research at the Celiac Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said that between 2 million and 3 million Americans report maintaining a gluten-free diet, and about 10 percent of that group has celiac disease.

Leffler states that this creates a paradox of sorts: “Most people who are on the gluten-free diet don’t have celiac disease, and most people who have celiac disease don’t know that they have it and don’t eat gluten-free.”

Also, eating gluten free for awhile and then returning to gluten can cause cramps and severe dietary problems, so those who aren’t gluten-intolerant and don’t have Celiac’s in effect create a gluten intolerance within themselves.

There’s a palpable backlash among restaurants as well, who are receiving more requests than ever for gluten free meals but are unable to produce them.

For the hundreds of thousands of Celiac’s sufferers and gluten intolerant, gluten-free isn’t a fad, but a lifestyle.

In a way it’s welcoming to see more gluten-free products on the market. But in a way it’s also difficult to cope with intolerant bandwagoners who claim an allergy to gluten who don’t have one.

The newest weight-loss craze is to eat “gluten-free”. Gluten is a wheat by-product, and those who cannot digest gluten have a condition called Celiac’s Disease. Others are simply gluten-intolerant.

However, if 1% of the population has Celiac’s, and up to 30% of the population is trying to eat “gluten-free”, the numbers simply don’t add up.

That means that 30 times the number of those who actually have the disease, regardless of diagnosis, are following a gluten-free diet.

But is cutting out gluten actually causing weight loss?

According to Bridget Benelam of the British Nutrition Foundation:

many gluten-containing products, such as cakes, biscuits, croissants, pancakes, muffins, jam tarts and pies, are high in calories, so cutting them out can help with weight loss, especially if you tend to eat a lot.

But this has nothing to do with avoiding gluten and everything to do with reducing calories.

In effect, you’re simply losing weight because you’re cutting normally-bad foods out of your diet, not because you’re eating gluten-free.

not the devil?

And problematically, most gluten-free items you purchase at the market are actually worse for you:

It’s not just calories that are often higher in gluten-free products – they often contain more fat, sugar and/or salt to improve their flavour or texture.

It’s similar to the low-fat craze a few years back. Low fat items are also low in taste, and as a result, they were often higher in sugar, sodium, and other additives to make up for that loss.

That led to a product that was more unhealthy than the original product, and the pendulum swung back to eating healthy-fat items.

Also, by skipping out on products with gluten, you’re likely causing yourself digestive distress:

Some gluten-free products are made with refined grains rather than whole grains and contain less fibre.

Low fibre intakes are linked to constipation, which can cause bloating, stomach cramps, sickness and loss of appetite.

And lastly, you’re missing out on crucial vitamins.

A recent German study revealed that gluten- free diets are more likely to be deficient in iron, magnesium, folate and thiamin.

We’re still learning a great deal about how diet affects our system. I’ll end with the following by someone who knows about the subject of diet and intolerances the best:

“No-one should ever diagnose themselves with an intolerance or allergy,” says Sarah Sleet of Coeliac UK.