The Gluten-Free Bandwagon

According to a recent article in Ad-Age, the gluten-free industry has amassed $4.2 billion in sales so far in 2013.

Sounds like a pretty good reason to jump on, doesn’t it?

Set aside the fact that roughly 3 million Americans who are diagnosed with Celiac might have, at one time, been the sole target audience; now, consumers are simply reading the label ‘gluten-free’ and buying those products simply because they think gluten-free equals healthy.

Some recognize that ‘maybe’ there is a connection between a variety of health issues and gluten, but the majority simply see the GF label and choose that over it’s gluten-rich competitors.

While it’s quite progressive, on one hand, top consider the fact that there is much more awareness, not only of needing to be gluten-free for Celiac, but also for gluten sensitivity (which is not always something we can measure quantitatively, by the way), it’s quite the double-edged sword when we see the huge number (which continues to grow) of gluten-free “foods” which essentially are nothing more than gluten-free junk.

Cookies, cakes, breads, pastas, sauces, dips, candies… all can be labeled gluten free and none have anything remotely redeeming about them from a health standpoint and many still contain noxious ingredients that serve nothing other than to facilitate your path toward sickness.

Living on a diet of packaged, processed foods, even if they are gluten free, is missing the boat in terms of what we are meant to be eating.  Where is the veg?  The protein?  The healthy, natural fat?

Towards the end of the same article, the classic argument that wheat is actually good for us, courtesy of The Wheat Foods Council:  “Research has shown that an overly restrictive diet (such as the one proposed in Wheat Belly), can be unhealthy, not sustainable long term and can put one at risk for not getting enough fiber.”  It continues to liken people following a gluten-free diet that do not have Celiac disease to people following a kidney-disease diet who do not have kidney-disease.

Huh?

Here it is:  gluten-free is great. It’s a step in the right direction.   Guess what?  All vegetables are gluten free.  All wild proteins are as well, and, yes, so are the natural fats we can get from olive oil, avocados and coconut oil.

Please don’t kid yourself that you’re making healthy choices if you’re eating gluten free waffles at breakfast, gluten- free melted cheese sandwiches at lunch and gluten-free pasta at dinner.

No different from having an ice-cream sundae purely for Calcium.

Call a spade a spade and skip ’em!