Do you think that gluten, lactose, or {insert supposed food intolerance here} is really just a fad?

GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »

Bonny132 wrote: »

I am gluten intolerant, was checked for celiac 3 years ago, tested high but not high enough to go for more testing, and that was after being taken off gluten 3 weeks before my blood tests. I am not interested in taking another test as I know what makes me ill, and I know how much better I feel now I have eliminated gluten.

So this is how this FAD affects me: within hours I am so bloated I look like I am 7 months pregnant, only my tracksuit bottoms fits me. Then comes the cramping, headache, nausea, bone pains and then comes the bathroom visits. Trust me, having the Niagara falls coming out of your backside is no fun. On a really bad day, 30+ visits, on a better day 8-10.

Then comes that wonderful wind, that bloating has to come out sometime. I can make a grown man proud. I am ill for 3-5 days.

I can track my imaginary intolerance back in my medical records for 35 years. So yes, sure, I am on the gluten intolerance bandwagon, because gluten intolerance does not exist, and btw an intolerance and an allergy are two different things. I am not allergic to gluten.

If you had been to my doctors, they'd have done further testing given your other symptoms, because I tested like you did.

They never biopsied you? Unreal.

You have all the symptoms and should act as if you have celiac.

As I said - for anyone with real gluten issues, the bathroom tells the story.

supaflyrobby1 wrote: »

I do not discount at all those who have legitimate medical issues, but I would still contend that the majority of people who have a gluten fixation in 2017 are simply impressionable, attention-seeking rubes who follows silly marketing trends and are buying into the hype. The same type of people that bought a Lance Armstrong bracelet and would of been a prime candidate for purchasing a pet rock when that was trendy.

This extremely annoying girl that works in HR at my company told me a few weeks ago she thought she was allergic to gluten. She blathered on endlessly about how she always felt run-down and crabby, had a waning sex drive, dry skin and hair, etc .Must be gluten! Yeah, that's the obvious culprit. Because at 25 years old, it couldn’t possibly be a result of the two packs of cigarettes per day and handle of rum she consumes every weekend. She probably got the idea from some stupid magazine article that she is always reading.

Again, I fully appreciate people who have Celiac disease. This is an autoimmune disorder that occurs in genetically predisposed people where the ingestion of gluten leads to damage in the small intestine and tons of pain. When people with celiac disease eat gluten, their body mounts an immune response that literally causes the body to attack itself. This has to suck, and these folks have my sympathy.

The guy who "discovered" gluten sensitivity was an Aussie by the name of Peter Gibson. Peter is a professor of gastroenterology at Monash University and director of the GI Unit at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. His original research yielded results which were not replaceable (a key concept in the scientific method) by other labs . So like any good scientist, he re-launched a far more extensive series of trials and concluded that non-Celiac gluten sensitivity is nonsense. Peter's lab is hardly alone in this conclusion either. Check Medline or PubMed.

So unless you actually have Celiac disease, gluten has almost ZERO practical effect on you. And when you have Celiac disease, you KNOW you have it very early on in life most of the time. Just because you get sleepy after you eat seven slices of pizza doesn’t mean you’re allergic to gluten. Feeling bloated after plowing through that plate of Fettuccine Alfredo? You should, but not for the reasons you try to delude yourself into believing.

That said, this level of stupidity does have some economic benefit. $12.5 billion dollars worth of gluten-free products sold in the year 2016. So I guess indirectly it is supplying jobs and an economic boost. Ironically enough, in my day job I work for an ad agency, and this is hardly the only time pure nonsense is able to capture both the minds and wallets of the impressionable public.

GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »

The problem is that the people providing gluten free food don't always take them seriously and the people truly relying on gluten free products can't always rely that products touted as being gluten free are going to be meticulously prepared since some people aren't taking this all that seriously thinking that they're just accommodating people following a fad, not people who have a disease. It's troubling.

GailK1967 wrote: »

As the mother of 3 coeliacs I am happy to see so many people on the gluten free /gluten intolerant fad. It means way way more options and choices for Coeliacs. The more people demanding GF foods, the more companies will stump up.

OTOH it's annoying to hear a gluten intolerant person blabbing on about how hard it is to live GF then watch them gobble down a piece of cake because "a little bit won't hurt". Maybe it won't hurt you bit it would put my kid in the hospital for a week and even worse chefs, cooks and wait staff take coeliacs less seriously when they see this kind of behavior.

WendyLeigh1119 wrote: »

No, of course they're not fads. Some people may be paranoid and think they're intolerant without seeing a doctor, but I spent many years seeing a variety of the best Gastroenterologists (not due to the topic, but for ulcers and GERD) and when they started testing me for food allergies and asking about intolerance I was like "Well I've never had them before, sooo why are we wasting time with this".

They told me that most people don't realize you can *literally* wake up one day with food allergies and/or intolerances even if you were fine yesterday. Due to the delicate balance of the GI as your body's 2nd but equally-important "brain". Similarly, they can suddenly go away come back, get new ones, etc. It can happen to anyone at any time no matter how healthy they are. And that mostly everyone is somewhat intolerant to something. It's just a matter of whether it's enough to cause symptoms.

But dumb things like "wheat belly" are what create this paranoia among healthy people who have no intolerance....but act like certain foods are poison.