All over the grocery store, recipe websites, buffets, restaurant menus – you name, there is a new common trend on our food and meal choices: Gluten Free. When only 1%, or approximately 340 000 Canadians, are diagnosed with Celiac disease, it makes me wonder why the sudden increase in the gluten-free labeling and the gluten-free food options everywhere. There’s even proof in the numbers! Gluten free sales increased 30% between 2006-2010 in the United States and it is a $2.6 billion dollar industry. So why the increase?
Is a Gluten-Free Diet Healthier?
“Gluten-free diets can be dangerous if you take things out [nutrients] and you don’t add them back in“, according to registered dietician Kim Arrey. I see the online trend of a lot of people trying gluten-free diets to lose weight, but I could not find any scientific evidence that support that a gluten-free diet will lead to weight loss. Perhaps so many are turning to the gluten-free diet trend, as it has been endorsed by celebrities (Lady Gaga, Gwyneth Paltrow, Victoria Beckham, & Miley Cyrus to name a few) and certainly the popularity of the Wheat Belly book which has since been debunked. According to the Dieticians of Canada, not everyone should eat a gluten-free diet:
A gluten-free diet is the only healthy way of eating for people with celiac disease or a gluten sensitivity, but it’s not necessary for everyone else. Gluten is a type of protein found in grains like wheat, barley and rye, and any foods made with these grains. Unless you have celiac disease or a gluten sensitivity, or you are allergic to one of these grains, you don’t need to avoid them. Whether the grain you choose is gluten-free (such as corn, rice, millet or quinoa) or not, enjoying more whole grains is a healthy choice. For good health, make at least half of your grain choices whole grain each day.
Needing to Eat Gluten-Free Among the Gluten-Free Trend
Obviously one person’s thoughts cannot speak for everyone, but I interviewed a person that has to eat gluten-free for a medical reasons and she shares her thoughts and some frustrations on the gluten-free trend:
I have to eat gluten free because of a disease I have, but I know how to read ingredients and figure out what is gluten free and what isn’t. Companies label things like celery because it triggers people into grabbing that versus the celery not labeled gluten free. The whole thing is just absolutely ridiculous. People need to learn how to read ingredients the old fashioned way.
I am more than happy to help people out when it comes to gluten free eating, but what people don’t understand is that it’s not a way to lose weight. Yes, cutting out pasta and bread naturally is going to help you lose weight but that has nothing to do with gluten. In fact, gluten free cookies and pasta often times contain more fat and calories than products with gluten. I will never figure out where the whole gluten free diet for weight loss came into play. Carb-free would be a better description. Leave gluten out of it! – Kelly Whiteman Snipes
Kelly says she has problems getting gluten-free food that she needs at restaurants and in the grocery stores too because they are often out of stock and she wonders if people really need to eat gluten-free like she does, or if they’re just following the trend.
What are Healthy Grains and Why Do We Need Them?
According to the Healthy Grains Institute, healthy grains are whole grains which include: wheat, barley, rye, triticale, oats, buckwheat, coloured rice (black, brown and red), wild rice, corn, quinoa, millet, sorghum, amaranth, einkorn, spelt, kamut and teff. The entirety of the grain — all parts: bran, endosperm, and germ — must be included; milling and processing remove the germ and the bran which in turn removes many minerals and vitamins. This is done to produce white flour and even though white flour is enriched with vitamins and minerals, it is still not as nutritionally healthy as whole grain whole wheat flour.
People need carbohydrates in their diet, according to Dr. Carol Greenwood. There are healthy complex carbohydrates found in whole grains that can provide a person with the proper nutrients and these complex carbohydrates break down slowly, helping you sustain that full feeling that can prevent overeating. It is also important to remember the carbohydrates in grain-based products are converted by the body into glucose, which gives our brains energy and also supports other bodily functions.
Whole grains may also reduce your risk of:
- Diabetes
- Some types of cancers (colorectal)
- Weight gain/obesity
- Cardiovascular disease
- Stress
- High cholesterol
- High blood pressure
Please visit the Healthy Grains Institute and the Heart & Stroke Foundation for more information on whole grains and disease prevention.
Some Gluten-Free Humor
I just wanted to end this article with a couple of tweets with some gluten-free products that I can logically assume would never have contained gluten anyway (marketing ploy) and a video I find hilarious as a wheat farmer’s wife! I myself could never voluntarily give up gluten! (Pardon some of the crudeness!)
Here's another #glutenfree goody for ya. Person also captioned"GMO, wheat, egg, lactose, dairy & HFCS free!" pic.twitter.com/GZVGBZDeGb
— Sarah Schultz (@NurseLovesFarmr) January 15, 2014
Of COURSE it's gluten-free. It's CELERY for fucks sake. pic.twitter.com/1WfV3mxrsl
— Wil Wheaton (@wilw) January 2, 2014
Conclusion
As a wheat farmer’s wife, it’s very frustrating to see wheat being cast as the villain in our food chain. Instead of cutting out a whole food group because of a diet trend, really do your research, talk to a dietician and your physician, and strive to eat a well-balanced diet of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, milk-based products, and meat.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2014 Sarah Schultz
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Sarah, I decided to come visit your blog to see what's new. I was pleasantly surprised to see you publish this! Fantastic write up with lots of great information. I am definitely sharing. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to be a part of this.
P.S. LOVE the humor in the end! 🙂
My recent post A Farmer for Every Choice
Yes I forgot to tell you! Thanks so much for contributing to this and for sharing it!
I heartily agree. The wave of gluten free foods being pushed out of the supermarket doors is just the latest way to perk up sales at the expense of the health of the consumer and actually makes the plight of those who need gluten free products worse because there is no standard defined for “gluten free”.
I count myself lucky not to be included amongst those who have had their intestines ravaged by celiac disease but I am among the number who have a diminished tolerance to gluten. Foregoing bread and pasta (among my favourite foods) for as little as two months convinced my doctor to change my diagnosis from diabetic to “gluten tolerance issues”. There doesn’t seem to be any consensus on the number of us affected only that the number is growing rapidly. One hopes that is due primarily to increased awareness.
I believe that you are correct in saying to Erin that no studies have been done. That’s the root of our current dilemma. No studies on plant hybridization, none on crop inputs, none on the appalling loss of diversity in our food crops. We’ve taken what ought to have been the product of thousands of years of evolution and mashed it into a few decades.
Please don’t think that this reflects badly on farmers. It seems to me that in many ways they have even less control over their portion of our mutual handbasket than the rest of us. We’re all in this together and if we continue on the path we’ve chosen over the past century or so then the results will not be pretty.
Yes, Rick, there wasn't any stats that I could find for "gluten intolerance" sufferers, but there is definitely a lot out there.
I'm a bit confused—you say there's no studies done on plant hybridization, etc….regarding gluten intolerance?
What I meant Sarah was that there were no studies on the impact on human health in general.
In the past 100 years since Mendels work on inheritance has been aggressively applied to virtually all of our food stuffs we have 'improved' everything, or at least the tiny subset that we haven't discarded. We've focused on the main goal of producing lots of cheap food by whatever means were available to us and we succeeded. We're fifth on the cheap eats list. but we never asked if it was good, only if it was good enough. Now we're obese, diseased, allergic and looking at a future wherein your progeny are likely to experience shorter lifespans than we will. We forgot that you get what you pay for.
Of course most of the abuse of the food system occurred twixt farm and fork and it isn't limited to advertising abuse..
GMOs. Same story, shorter time line. Kind of makes you wish you had Monsanto stock now that the global use of pesticide has shot up 11% or maybe some Dow stock now that they've got their 2,4-D products.
The wheat that you and your spouse produce isn't the villain in this piece though what happens to it on the way to the store should be a crime.
Bah ha ha ha "It's celery, for fucks sake!" Hilarious.
Great post with a lot of great information. And secretly (OK, maybe not so secretly now) I'm glad Wheat Belly has been debunked.
Thanks for sharing this!
Yes, there's a lot of great info on the Healthy Grains website about VAT (abbreviated term for belly fat) and no scientific-evidence proving that wheat/gluten causes it!
This "scuzzy" form of marketing is appearing on a lot of food packaging. Another favourite ploy is declaring foods to be "GMO free" when there is no possible way for them to be or contain GMO's. There may be a positive on this though, as I'm thinking the more companies doing this on their packaging, the less reason there is to force mandatory GMO labeling on the industry.
My recent post Arctic Apples – Bring ‘em on
Oh, Bruce….don't get me started on the GMO-free labeling trend. 😉 I purposefully do not purchase any products marketed as such, I do not believe in those marketing tactics and do not respect it at all.
I really, really like this post! You're providing soooo much great information. I am amazed at how many people say they are eating gluten-free just because they want to lose weight. Having been diagnosed with gestational diabetes, I really learned how to eat the "right way" especially after having numerous appointments with dietitians and my endocrinologist. They really stressed the importance of your body needing carbs to be healthy, it just needs to be good carbs. Towards the end of my pregnancy, I did have to go gluten-free for a few weeks because of how my body was processing it and making my blood sugar spike. But, it was done under the supervision of my doctor, so I was able to make food choices that were still healthy for me and the baby. I don't think people realize what they are doing to their body when they just got certain foods out of their diet completely. And honestly, I never knew much until I worked with my dietician. I have to laugh about you saying that celery is being marked as gluten-free. I saw something the other day and made a comment to my mom along the lines of, it's a vegetable…I hope it's gluten free. But it's such a marketing tactic to mark it that way!
My recent post 3 Ingredient Lasagna
Thanks for the kind words! Not that anyone's diet should drive me nuts….but it drives me nuts how wheat/gluten is vilified the way it is by the non-Celiac gluten-free diet trend. You really, really do need carbs in your diet; most of it is just a marketing ploy.
Sarah, what a great post! After commenting I'm headed to read that analysis of Wheat Belly because I've been considering giving it a read. I too have been a bit stunned by the gluten free trend as a diet. It's odd to me mainly because I for one never went to research glutens in food until being diagnosed with PCOS and began to assess my diet and how glutens in food may or may not effect me due to the PCOS. As usual, you've clearly done your research and I think people will benefit from giving this a read and then delving into their own research before declaring to be gluten free as a diet trend rather than a life necessity due to medical reasons. Great read, thanks for sharing and putting in the legwork of this research!
My recent post Rolo Pretzel Brownies Recipe
Oh thanks, Erin! Here's another link from the Healthy Grains Institute, on the 2nd page it goes into a study that says no weight gain is found in the visceral adipose tissue (VAT; belly fat) specifically caused by wheat/gluten: http://www.healthygrains.ca/resources/fact-sheets…
I know that some find relief with behavioral problems in kids (autism, ADHD, etc.) by cutting out gluten, lactose, food dyes, etc…but I'm honestly not sure if studies have been done? Thanks again for your nice comment and taking the time to read!