The next time you overhear someone ordering a “burger, no bun,” don’t assume she’s doing low-carb. Odds are you’ve bumped into the newest food fad: shunning foods with gluten.
So what makes gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye and barley, the latest dietary bogeyman? If you’re one of the three million Americans with celiac disease, the tiniest smidgen of gluten will damage your intestines, cause serious illness and possibly lead to early death. The only way to treat it is with a gluten-free diet. That means nothing with gluten. Ever. Period.
And yet, those three million celiac sufferers do not a food fad make. So what’s really driving the $1.56 billion gluten-free market, which has grown 28 percent annually since 2004? “The food industry was looking for the next hot thing and found it in gluten-free products,” explains Cynthia Kupper, RD, of the Gluten Intolerance Group of North America, in Seattle.
Seriously? Because gluten-free is not for the weak. This is the Marquis de Sade of eating plans, requiring you to hunt down minute amounts of gluten—not just in bread and pasta but in unlikely places such as vitamins, medications, even lip balm—and then avoid those things for the rest of your life.
How did such a stringent medical diet develop a following to rival the Jonas Brothers’? Great publicity. Start with Oprah, who did a 21-day “cleanse” that banned gluten. Then there’s the National Institutes of Health Celiac Disease Awareness Campaign. Suddenly scores of people became convinced they should be gluten-free too.
To hear converts talk, a gluten-free diet is the answer to everything from excess weight to autoimmune diseases. “These links are not scientifically supported,” says Joseph Murray, MD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He does allow that there are “people who don’t have celiac disease who feel better if they avoid gluten.”
Why would you benefit from cutting back if you don’t have celiac? “Most food intolerance occurs on a spectrum,” says David Katz, MD, MPH, of the Yale Prevention Research Center. “Celiac disease is severe. Milder forms of gluten intolerance could contribute to systemic inflammation, which could worsen other disorders because of general immune-function impairment. So it’s plausible, if not proven, that gluten could be a contributing factor in some conditions.” Katz thinks lesser degrees of gluten intolerance are common.
