Have you seen increasingly larger gluten-free sections at your local store?
Why is that?
Some kind of fancy new diet?
Not... quite...
Hey guys, Trace here for DNews.
For the 1-percent of the population with celiac disease in the U.S., your long nightmare is
over now, the FDA finally set standards for gluten-free
labeling!
Gluten-free standards now specify that anything over 20 parts per million is allowed to be
considered actually free of the gluteny-devil.
Yes, there will be SOME gluten in stuff labeled "gluten free," but 20ppm is like 32 seconds
out of a year or a drop of water in your car's gas tank.
It's not much.
Having Celiac disease is NOT the same as a food allergy.
Food allergies like with wheat or shellfish involve the body's antibodies attacking something
they see as an invader.
Celiac is an autoimmune disease.
So the immune system is attacking the body itself.
When a person with Celiac disease consumes gluten, their immune system goes on the fritz
and starts attacking the villi in the small intestine that are responsible for absorbing
the nutrients from food.
This lack of nutrients in combination with the immune system attacking it's own body
causes a number of negative physiological effects and can even stunt development in
children.
Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye and barley.
It's not bad for you, nor is it a product of food processing.
Gluten is the latin word for glue.
It's the "glue" that holds bread together, and was discovered by monks in the 7th century.
If you've eaten gluten-free breads you probably missed that chewy texture from regular bread
-- that's the gluten.
It's used in regular foods, but also animal feed and is sometimes added to vegetarian
"meat" to give it protein and consistency.
But if it's just 1-percent of the U.S. population, why do people hate on gluten so much?
Now for those of you who are unfamiliar with living gluten-free, there are plenty of resources
around the web, but just an FYI, if you don't need to live that way due to an autoimmune
disorder, choosing to do so won't inherently make you healthier.
Outside of the 1-percent of Americans with Celiac, as many as 7-percent of people have
a gluten sensitivity, but many others are piling onto the gluten-free bandwagon, similar
to our other videos regarding fad diets, cutting out a food group is a fad, and simply paying
more attention to what you're putting in your body will be enough to lose some weight.
Americans tend to OVER-eat grains and breads, so a noob trying a gluten-free diet will often
immediately cut back on grains, but a gluten-free diet doesn't mean low-carb and doesn't mean
"better" necessarily.
In fact, if done poorly, simply gutting the gluten from your diet can leave people deficient
in iron, calcium, B-vitamins and vitamin D, according to the Academy of Nutrition and
Dietetics.
It can also be hard to get enough fiber!
The problem with Celiac disease is how underdiagnosed it is and as more people realize they have
the disease, we'll probably see more gluten-free options, but don't think that just because
they say SCIENCEWORD-Free they mean healthy, they just mean safe to eat for those people.
What do you think about gluten-free?
Have you tried a gluten-free food that you think is better than the gluten-full version?
Share it with us!
Start the conversation.
Thanks for watching DNews today, we'll see you later!