I can’t say for certainty why gluten-free is such a selling point now, but I’m glad it is. I’m gluten-sensitive and found out the hard way that gluten can be hidden in damn near anything. To have a label on a food that actually states it’s gluten-free means that I can eat it and am less likely to get sick from it. Otherwise, I’m stuck with reading the label (which I do even if it says it’s gluten-free) and hoping that it’s not been mislabeled or that I’m overly tired/hungry and miss some ingredient that contains gluten.
Having something outright labeled gluten-free also means that my friends and family have an easier time feeding me. They don’t have to worry as much if the chicken broth they’re using in the soup is actually labeled gluten-free.
I agree - a rising tide lifts all boats - I worked for someone with celiac disorder a dozen years ago - at that point, many of the gluten-free products on the market were dry, crumbly, tasteless imitations of their wheat-based counterparts - now, I’m seeing things like breads and pasta that are hard to tell from the mainstream gluten-containing stuff.
There are a lot of people out there who feel crappy. Tired. Achy. Low energy. Upset bowels. Headaches. These are generic, difficult to pin down symptoms, and going to a doctor can be an exercise in frustration. Maybe you’re depressed. Maybe you have a virus. Blood tests don’t show anything out of order. You get prescribed one medication, but it doesn’t really help. So you get a second or a third. You’re doing what you’re supposed to or you’re at least trying, but it’s hard to keep up with daily exercise when you get home, and all you’re up for is staring at the wall.
So, you try to take responsibility for your own health. You do some research, and you start reading about nutrition and all the pitfalls in our modern diet. The symptoms for gluten intolerance sound similar to what you’re experiencing, but the testing for it is difficult, expensive, and getting a negative doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t have it. So why not just try a gluten-free diet? Finding gluten free food is work, so clearly you’re Doing Something. Sticking to a gluten free diet is challenging, so you’re Not A Whiny Baby. Maybe it actually helps or maybe it’s just the placebo effect. Either way, you’ll keep doing it until it’s painfully obvious it’s not working and something else presents itself as a possibility.
I wish others wouldn’t get so down on people who are just trying to figure out a way to feel better. Sure, it’s a fad, and sure there are ninnies out there who would jump on the Tapeworm Diet if they thought it was the new cool thing. The rest of us are just trying to figure out a way not to feel so crappy.
My wife doesn’t have celiacs, but she has digestive problems when she eats gluten. It’s sort of like how someone who is lactose intolerant can drink milk but it’s uncomfortable.
It is surprising how many products have wheat. Before, I would have laughed along with the OP when he asked if turkey or iced coffee had gluten, but not anymore. You never know what products have wheat in them as an additive without checking the ingredients. We were surprised recently that a restaurant’s fajitas had gluten–some part of the marinade had gluten.
I do think there should be two different designations: Certified Gluten Free and Naturally Gluten Free. CGF would be for products which don’t contain gluten and aren’t processed in facilities which handle wheat. NGF would be for products which don’t contain gluten in the ingredients, but the facility may handle wheat and there could be some cross contamination.
I don’t think it’s so much a fad as Celiac and gluten-sensitivities are on the rise and the food industry is responding. It’s about four times more common now then 50 years ago, and approximately 1 in 100 people are Celiac (this doesn’t include sensitivities). Only about 5% of people who are Celiac, know they’re Celiac.
My husband was recently diagnosed as Celiac, and I suspect I have at least a sensitivity. We are very thankful for the many options in stores and restaurants now. That said, there are still many people who use gluten-free foods as part of their fad diet, which is sort of odd, because you wouldn’t really be restricting calories by eating GF foods.
When my mother was really suffering from her arthritis and asthma, she got on a “no sugar” kick and avoided “trigger” foods. Everything was a trigger food, it seemed. It was the most annoying phase of her life. I was glad when she latched on to something else.
However, the no (added) sugar thing, as crazy as it seemed to me back then, seems to be borne out by the latest research. Sugar really does appear to exacerbate inflammation. My mother was later diagnosed with diabetes; it’s hard for me to not think that if she had continued with her “no sugar” lifestyle, she’d be diabetes-free.
As long as no one is taking gluten out of my mouth, I don’t have a problem with the “fad”.
I thought about the malt after I posted. Its one of those sneaky things that I don’t need to bother with, but its in a lot of things you wouldn’t really think about if you need to be strict with your diet.
As I said in my earlier post, I didn’t get great healthcare. I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. On the rare occasions when I saw a doctor, he didn’t talk about food allergy/intolerance. I suppose I’ve got to get my terminology right. I have a ‘gluten sensitivity’, because it’s almost surely related to my immune system. Arthritis is hitting me pretty hard these days. I’m self-diagnosed with my gluten issues, but I had to be hit over the head with them before I saw it. When you pass blood from eating something, and stop passing blood when you stop eating it, that’s probably a good indicator to avoid it. Sister also has UC, arthritis, and some relatively minor psoriasis. I’m trying to get her to try gluten-free as well, but as much as she bitches about her UC, she gives up on the diet as too difficult long before she learns if it will help.
Yeah, I’m learning more and more about eating gluten-free. It’s an ongoing process, but the internet, used with care, is a great resource. I don’t think knowing about the gluten in beer would have deterred me, as it was my favorite brand, which is hard-to-get around here. I think I needed to burn my hand to learn that particular lesson. I LOVE dark beers and porters, but now I know I can’t have them. I avoid all beer now.
I’ll write down the name of the beers you recommend and keep them in my wallet. I’m unlikely to ever see them, but you never know, and by the time I do find them I’ll be long overdue for a treat
I’ll give 'em a try. Here’s another reason why gluten-free is a pain, though - just to get a decent pizza crust, I have to buy three different types of flour. I’m starting to get used to being a mad scientist in the kitchen, though. Mixing this and that, using cereal for something other than a breakfast food, etc. I miss the speed and convenience of eating like a healthy person.
I dealt with a parent like this, who refused to say “No,” to her child, because it might squash her creative spirit, or something, if she couldn’t do any goddam thing she wanted. The exceptions were all her weird food things, and vaccinations, because they make you autistic. So, the kid couldn’t have sugar, and that meant even restricting the kid’s fruit intake (but she could have honey on her soy yogurt, because honey isn’t sugar :eyeroll:). This kid had all kinds of behavior problems, and also got picked on by other kids, because of her enormous sense of entitlement. Could not share to save her life. Couldn’t wait her turn. I could go on. It was really sad. So, instead of disciplining the kid, the mother consults a naturopath about the kid’s “disorder,” and the naturopath says to take gluten out of her diet. The kid already can’t eat sugar and dairy-- the dairy, because, according to the mother, the kid got an ear “infection” the first time she ever ate a dairy product.
As far as things like celiac becoming more common, my son’s doctor said disorders and allergies were becoming more common because people don’t cook from scratch anymore, or at least, that was her theory. She said babies and toddlers used to get inoculated by small food particles in the air, from things like baking bread at home, and now kids don’t get that anymore.
I don’t know that that’s true, but I do know Andrew Wakefield’s crackpot autism theories associated dairy and gluten with autism, and some parents misunderstood even the wrong crackpot theory, and decided to withhold the foods from their healthy, non-autistic kids, as a preventive measure, even long after it was obvious the kids were fine.
As with others in the thread, I’m glad that I have options. What I know is that if I eat gluten, even when I had no idea I was doing so, I end up in serious pain and with digestive complaints that really suck. When I don’t eat gluten, those complaints don’t exist.
And gluten is hidden in stupid places.
It’s frustrating to have people who want the “gluten fad” to go away, not caring that it means some of us who have fewer options, because seeing mentions of gluten enrages them for some weird reason. (I’m not saying they are in this thread. But in others and elsewhere in the world.) I do worry that some of those people, the ones who feel that weird rage, will take it on themselves to adulterate dishes at restaurants, or lie about gf offerings, the way some people have encountered with allergies. (Where people will “sneak” the allergy-causing ingredient into cooking just to show up the allergy sufferer.) This is a scary idea, though I don’t exactly fret about it all day.
From what I can tell (and I’ve done some market research on the topic – it’s what I do for a living), it’s not “diet” in the sense of “trying to lose weight”, but “diet” in the sense of “thinking that I’m eating healthier”.
Gluten sensitivity and Celiac disease are a lot more well-known now than they were just a couple of years ago. And, there appears to be a lot of people who have just sort of decided, “if gluten causes issues for those people, then it must simply be bad for you, and I’m going to avoid it.”
Face - it’s not beer, but most ciders (I think all of Woodchuck’s) are naturally gluten-free. They’re not beer, but they’re becoming more and more popular, and can fill in the same function for those of us who don’t drink beer.
I was staring at the cider section for way too long the other day, and noticed that Angry Orchard’s all say “Gluten Free” except for the Ginger flavor. I would expect one would make ginger flavor by… adding ginger, but apparently not.
As for Woodchuck - The Spring seasonal is out now, but you may be able to find either Bourbon Barrel (one of the winter seasonals) or Summer. The Bourbon Barrel will likely hit that same spot a really rich dark beer does. The Summer is great if you want a really bright, crisp drink, perfect for hanging out on the back patio next to the grill. For me, it fills the same niche that corona does for my friends.
The issue I see with “fad” allergies is that everyone gets complacent. It’s hard for some college kid waiting tables to take allergies seriously when half of the sufferers are just jumping on the bandwagon, and another 40% simply don’t like a certain ingredient. So when that tenth person comes along, and is actually allergic? The waiter is very likely to roll his eyes and blithely assure guests that of course the pizza crust is gluten free, dairy free, and such. Those other nine people were fine, so why would one expect the tenth to have a problem?
You might be able to buy a decent gluten free bread blend now - back when I was experimenting with it, I couldn’t find one - I enjoy experimenting with baking anyway (and for me, this wasn’t critical anyway, because I don’t require a gluten free diet).
I found rice flour to be quite heavy and dense and greyish, so I counteracted this with the soya flour (which is lightweight and pale yellow) - the tapioca flour is actually a fairly good substitute for the gluten in wheat flour, binding the dough and adding ‘stretch’. It just happened that the soya flour also gave it a wholesome wheaty sort of taste too.
Which is why you shouldn’t say you are allergic when you just don’t like something. Also, why you shouldn’t badger someone to try something they have repeatedly told you they don’t like, so that they resort to telling you they can’t eat it for health reasons so you’ll shut up.
We’re vegetarians and we keep kosher. At the beginning of the school year, anything with gelatin is on the list of what our snowflake can’t have, including marshmallows, and gummi candies, but after saying please, please be careful, we also say, nothing bad will happen; it’s a personal and religious preference, but it won’t make him sick.
And yeah, a lot of people really don’t “get” intolerances and allergies. It’s very specific to a person-- peanut butter may be bad for a few people, but it’s not a bad food; in fact, on the whole, it’s a pretty good food. It’s as silly as banning gardens because a few people (like me) are allergic to flowers, or doctors refusing to prescribe penicillin anymore because some people (like me) are allergic to it. Neither flowers nor PCN family of antibiotics are unhealthy or bad for people in general, and people without allergies can’t improve their health by avoiding things they aren’t allergic to.
Believe me, nothing makes me much stabbier than “don’t like” = “allergic.” I had an employee a while back who was really, actually, dreadfully allergic to tomatoes and tomato products. On those occasions when I picked up lunch for the crew, I had to be the Food Police regarding his meals, because no one seemed to grok that it wasn’t okay to just remove the tomato slices or wipe off the catsup with a napkin. Trying to “catch” a 6’9" teenager and administer a shot from an epipen was beyond my physical ability, but I had to try once! And I have seen tons of people say “I’m allergic to tomatoes” and then douse their fries in a gallon of Heinz. It’s frustrating!
Of course a lot of folks don’t want to eat gluten. Gluten is made from glutes, i.e. people’s big butt muscles. Now that you know the truth, do you want to eat some stranger’s butt?
That’s why I stick to meat, vegetables, fruit, rice, dairy and chocolate. I keep a loaf of Udi’s bread around, and once in a while use a pre-fab mix - but in general it isn’t worth the time and expense to bother with gluten substitute products.
The Pillsbury thin pizza dough has: water, modified tapioca starch, whole sorghum flour, whole millet flour, and rice flour as the first five ingredients. Seems like they put a lot of effort into it just to come up with cardboard. They should give you a call.
I tried some hard cider once. Found it painful, with all the sour & the dry. Anything on the sweet side to recommend? I might need to build up to it like I did with beer - I didn’t start out with porters, for example. I’ve also thought about mead, though I’d not know where to start with that.
I can’t eat gluten, but I’ve seen many a glute I’d like to sink my teeth into.
/I fixed your link in my quote.
Must be my poor communication skills, for which I apologize.
My question to them was not posed in the spirit of “let’s find out how pervasive gluten-free foodstuffs are”; rather, I was sampling for “how many people know what gluten is?”
I suppose it’s possible I just got lucky, and found the only two people in Surf City who don’t know what gluten is, right there in one store.
