Why is "GLUTEN-FREE!" such a desirable selling point these days?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was in Costco yesterday, doing my weekly marketing, and of course, grazing. Nearly every demonstrator took great pains to tell all and sundry that the product they were sampling is “Gluten-Free!”

I can understand how this might make a product attractive to someone with a gluten sensitivity, but really, how many people in the country are afflicted with gluten sensitivities? I’ve got a feeling that most people don’t even know why “Gluten-Free!” is a positive property for a foodstuff to have.

Two true examples from yesterday: first, a young lady was doing a dual demo. Sandwich buns made with pretzel dough (or something, to make it a pretzel bun), and sliced turkey. she would make a turkey sandwich with the pretzel buns and a couple of slices of turkey (no mayo or any other condiment, mind you), cut it up into bite-sized pieces, and pass them out. When I took one, I asked, “Are these gluten-free?” She stared blankly at me for a moment, consulted the script that had the talking points for her patter, and said, “Looks like not.”

Second, I went through a virtually identical interaction with a young lady pouring out little portions of ICED COFFEE.

I suspect I could have gotten a similar response from someone hawking the economy-size package of AA alkaline batteries.

What the hell is going on? I don’t have a gluten sensitivity, myself, and in fact, I kinda like gluten. Is there some place I can go to get a good deal on all of the gluten that’s being left out of all the foods at Costco?

2

It’s just the latest fad, like how several years ago everything was using “low carb” as a selling point. I think it kind of goes along with the paleo diet fad, because they’re very against wheat. I think it’s bullshit for most people, but yeah, obviously there are people with real medical conditions. I just started considering trying a gluten-free diet myself, after ignoring the craze until now, but that’s only because I have Hashimoto’s disease and I happened to come across some information that many people with that condition also have gluten intolerance. But first I’m going to do some research to see if that’s real science or not. I hope it’s not, because I like gluten.

3

Here’s some spare gluten for you! (With peanuts! And probably some MSG!)

Gluten seems to be the trendy allergy today. Back in my day, everyone was “allergic” or “sensitive” to MSG. Then kids couldn’t take PB&J for lunch, thanks to rampant peanut allergies. Next week, it will be something else random, to which a handful of people have legitimate allergies/sensitivities. The rest of the bandwagon will fill up with idiots who seem to believe that their delicate constitutions can’t possibly tolerate things they’ve eaten forever, because they watched an episode of Dr. Oz or some crap.

4

People are basically idiots.

And yes, what Lacunae Matata said…if you go into any Asian Grocery store, you can buy PURE GLUTEN, prefried with lots of other yummy additives!

5

Just to add…a huge number (if not all) gluten-free products are far more expensive than their gluten-ed counterparts. Which is a royal pain in the butt for folks with coeliac disease and others with a true gluten intolerance.

But like having solar cells on your roof, or driving an environmentally-friendly vehicle, it’s uber-trendy for the Yuppies to stock their supermarket trolley with the GF stuff to show how rich and conscious they are.

Status symbol of the early 21st Century.

6

Just a reminder to people that not EVERYONE is being trendy, or have their head stuck up some radio doctor’s ass. I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis back in 2001, and for reasons beyond the scope of this thread, I never really got much in the way of healthcare. I took cheap medicine (sulfasalazine) that quit working, I took cheap steroids when the bleeding got too bad, but the side-effects are just about as bad as the illness.

Never really got a handle on it. I knew I couldn’t eat spaghetti and pizza, so I avoided them and thought it was the tomatoes. Gluten’s just about everywhere in the average American’s diet, though, and I fluctuated between bleeding & cramping a little, and bleeding & cramping a lot. I couldn’t pin it on anything. After Thanksgiving 2012, when a few days of biscuits, gravy and stuffing leftovers sent me into a 3-month flare that took 40 lbs off me, I considered the idea that maybe it was the bread, or the gluten.

I’ve hardly passed blood at all since I started avoiding gluten, and when I do, it’s because I cheated. I’m much improved. I still have a hell of a time sticking to a restricted diet - many ‘gluten-free’ products are not that great, or even horrible, and they’re all at least 3x more expensive.

Anyway, I’m happy to have SOME options at the supermarket. I found some good gluten-free noodles and frequently enjoy pasta, something I’d long missed. Pillsbury has a cardboard-like thin-crust pizza dough, in a tub in the refrigerated section for $5 a throw. At least it’s pizza of a sort, and you know what they say about pizza :slight_smile:

I have to work on gluten-free breadcrumbs and/or batter for pan-fried chicken and deep-fried fish. Cobbled something together for the deep fryer out of crushed Rice Chex and rice flour that tasted pretty good, but I had trouble getting it to stick to the fish.

Beer doesn’t seem to agree with me either, particularly that case of Yuengling Porter I was happy to find on the shelves down here in the South. That hurt when I drank it, and it hurt worse when I realized I couldn’t drink it any more.

I ain’t being freakin’ ‘trendy’. I can’t even drink my favorite beer!

7

Yeah, this is the upside of the fad. Increase demand has increased supply, and actually has driven prices down. There’s actually some stuff that’s around the same price as other specialty items. They’re still more expensive than the cheapest stuff, but it’s a lot better.

It’s also nice not to have to go to a health food store, where the prices are even higher. You can actually find gluten-free stuff at Walmart. And most restaurants have started accommodating at least with special menus. Even Taco Bell, which used to be the worst, has its rice bowls which are gluten free. The local Bent-and-Dent now has gluten free stuff, and the Mennonite bakery is considering offering gluten free bread.

The downside of the fad is that faddists don’t know enough to be as meticulous as a real sufferer needs to be. So you do have to be careful even with gluten-free offerings. For example, there’s a local pizza place that offers gluten free crusts, but I don’t eat there because they apparently have cross contamination issues. Fortunately, there’s a take-and-bake option an hour away that uses all premade crusts and disposable trays–so I don’t have to worry about the equipment or the workers.

It doesn’t take much at all. The upper estimate is 200 mg of gluten per day. Most seem to think 80mg is as high as you can go. Eating only certified “gluten-free” foods can get you 6 - 60 mg of gluten per day (although new guidelines that take effect this year will make the 6mg more likely. It’s what you get with an average diet at 20 parts per million. Previously, up to 200 PPM was allowed.)

8

That’s because most beer is made from barley, and barley contains gluten. I’m concerned because that means either the doctor who diagnosed/takes care of you is an idiot for not informing you which grains contain gluten, or you’re without medical care and self-diagnosed. So here’s some help: wheat, barley, and rye all contain gluten. If you need to avoid gluten you need to avoid them. That includes minor contamination, and things like “seitan”. Gluten is also in soy sauce, which is made from fermented wheat and soy so watch out for that as well. (There are gluten-free soy sauces available now - so read the labels. It does make eating take-out Chinese a problem, though).

There are beers, or at least beer-like beverages, that do not contain gluten. These are made from sorghum, or a combination of rice and sorghum. In the US the big two at the moment are Anheuser-Busch’s Redbridge (which I think tastes better than many of their mainstream offerings) and New Grist Mill (sweeter than Redbridge). In the Detroit area I also ran into one called Colt but it sort of sucked so I don’t recommend it.

Meanwhile, corn is gluten-free naturally (just make sure nothing with it has been added to a mix, which happens because it makes for a lighter, spongier cornbread) so you might want to look at cornbread and breading your fried foods with cornmeal. Other grains that are naturally gluten-free are millet, sorghum, buckwheat, and quinoa (OK, technically quinoa isn’t a grain but it’s used like one). Oats are supposed to be gluten free but apparently are frequently contaminated with it, so some people report problems with it.

Your best option is to go for foods that are naturally gluten-free. That also usually means less processed stuff, which is better for everyone. Read the labels. Avoid anything with wheat, barley, or rye. This does eliminate most bread, crackers, and pretzels (sorry) but there’s actually a lot of foods out there that never had gluten in them (unless it was added).

And, just to clarify (once again) gluten sensitivity is NOT an allergy!. It is considered an immune disorder, but a “wheat allergy” and “gluten intolerance” are two different things.

9

I now realize I ought to change my attitude about peanut allergies. Because to someone else the gluten-free business seems pointless.

But it sucks to see the dark side of one of these allergies.

I recently posted to the Doper Milestones thread that it has been about a year since my wife hit her low weight of just above 80 pounds, a weight where she had not an ounce of fat at all. She couldn’t sit comfortably at the piano because of the hard bench on her backside. A year ago I didn’t know how much longer she would live. She had been wasting away for 5 months, being fed intravenously with TPN 16 hours a day from a pump she carried around in a backpack.

Is it gluten causing this? Every time she has something with gluten in it, she gets sick. But the specialists tell her that it’s not worth testing her for it because she has naturally avoided eating gluten for long enough that the test would not show a gluten allergy. And it’s not worth the risk of eating the stuff long enough for her to test positive.

She doesn’t eat gluten, and she feels better. That’s a fair deal as far as I’m concerned.

Note that the USA might even be bringing up the rear on this. Last time we went to Brazil I saw that every single food product on the shelves said either “This product contains gluten” or “This product does not contain gluten”. That sure makes it easier to choose one’s foods.

10

I made some very credible soft pizza bases using a blend of one third each tapioca, rice and soya flours, plus raising agent (baking powder), mixed with milk to a thick cake batter consistency, then piped in a solid spiral onto a nonstick tray - part-baked before adding the toppings.

Tortilla chips, blended to fine crumbs in a food processor. I’m not on a gluten-free diet, but this is my preference anyway.

11

a. Many people genuinely need to avoid gluten, so why not make it clear on the labeling and make their lives easier? (and improve sales of your product)

b. Many people attempt a gluten-free diet because it’s a “couldn’t hurt, could help” kind of thing. Some people report improvement in various conditions by reducing or eliminating gluten so there’s really no reason not to give it a go and see if it works.

c. It’s a fad.

I imagine that once the fad passes, improved offerings and labeling will remain, and we’ll all be better off for knowing that gluten can cause problems for many people.

12

When I was in one of my temp jobs, I sat next to a flake who decided that wheat was poison. No, she hadn’t been to a doctor or a nutritionist - she read it on the internet. And to round out the picture just a little, she screamed at her MIL for giving her son a banana because it has sugar in it!!! :eek: Honestly, the stuff she spouted about foods was so incredibly stupid, it would have been funny if others in the office didn’t keep coming to her for advice.

Anyway, it’s flakes like her who drive food fads. They latch on to things that legitimately affect people with certain conditions and decide that’s the solution for eternal healthy and vitality. To hear her talk, everyone in the building should have been dead because they ate those poisonous wheat products. Oh, and she did love to throw around the term “toxins” - as if she had any notion of what a toxin was…

Years ago, we hung out with a couple - the guy was a little skinny dude, but his wife had perpetual weight problems. She was eternally searching for the magic that would make her skinny - apparently “eat less and exercise more” made no sense. We went on a vacation with them once when she was on a food-pairing kick (I don’t recall what the diet was called) - she’d only eat certain categories of food with certain other categories - honestly, I have no idea what the supposed logic was, and within a few weeks, she got bored with that and moved on to her next fad.

But I think that’s the mentality that latches on to the “diet du jour” and food manufacturers are only to happy to oblige, for a price.

13

It’s a conspiracy by the corn industry. Because ethanol and HFCS aren’t enough…

14

My mother is a sample lady at Costco, and the reason they say it so often is because the customers demand it. About 10% of people have some sort of gluten sensitivity - ranging from “it gives me gas” to “I have a wheat allergy and carry an epi-pen” - gluten and lactose free are a diet that some people believe helps with autism. So they say it constantly because people ASK constantly. So its easier for them to simply say it all the time.

15

It’s also a quick and easy thing to pop on some products’ labels to get some attention, particularly if they don’t have to alter anything. I’ve noticed that my box of Rice Chex proclaims it to be gluten-free. As if the “Rice” part of the name wasn’t enough to make that clear.

16

It wasn’t - it used to be made in the same factory that turned out wheat chex - one day it was a wheat line, then a rice line - cross contamination was an issue for Chex. Now they restrict the wheat to a wheat only line.

Cross contamination isn’t an issue for me, but for other people on this thread, it really is.

Its like eating a chocolate bar in a facility that works with peanuts - peanut dust and wheat dust fly EVERYWHERE (one of my first jobs was working IT for a well known Twin Cities food manufacturer :wink: - you haven’t had fun until you’ve vaccuumed flour out of a server - we had to replace those much more often than the ones at headquarters).

17

While I agree that gluten-free seems to be the latest dietary fad, I don’t get your OP. Your example of how pervasive gluten-free foodstuffs are is that you asked a Costco demonstrator if the food was gluten-free?

18

Besides what **Dangerosa **said, sometimes wheat is in stuff you don’t expect. Cream of ***** soups (most brands) - I guess it’s a cheap thickener.
Pringles.
Soy sauce.
Pickles.
some salad dressings.
aspirin
vegetarian ‘meats’

It’s smart to put ‘gluten free’ on products you’d figure are probably gluten free anyway.

19

It is not uncommon to see all of the specialty products together. At the local store the gluten free flour blends are next to the bag of “vital wheat gluten”.

I was at a company sponsored beer tasting and the local microbrewer said that many beer have some wheat, not just the wheat beers. Apparently this can make the resulting product smoother.

My concern with self diagnosis is that possible misinterpretation. If you remove wheat from your diet and then test adding it back, it could make you sick just because you aren’t used to it. Obviously that depends on how long you are off of wheat.

As a biopsy-confirmed celiac patient, I like the side effect of the fad that makes items more available. I do worry that the fad aspect will make servers take it less seriously.

20

Many cereals - rice krispies, corn flakes - have barley malt flavoring so labeling the obvious “rice chex” isn’t so obvious.