Ian Marber is full of shiite.
My wife suffered painfully for years with Celiac. She would get yearly sinus infections that were debilitating. Gastro-intestinally she was in pain every day.
She worked out what was happening and has been 100% better since eliminating wheat products from her diet.
Where Mr. Marber gets it totally wrong is the yeast assumption. My wife makes wonderful breads with no wheat products but uses yeast in them. It has no ill effect on her. I cannot testify as to anyone else's reaction to yeast.
I concur. I have a demonstrated inflammatory response to wheat. No question about it.
He’s not discounting those with LEGITIMATE Celiac disease. He’s saying that the grand majority of folks without a legitimate allergy to gluten are more likely to be affected by yeasts rather than wheat gluten.
I was tested for Celiac and came up free and clear. I still avoid processed foods, and I feel healthier for it. I don’t eat any carbohydrates that aren’t naturally occurring.
While the fad diets are a load of hooey, the heavily researched and peer-reviewed diets such as Atkins and the Paleo diet are proving to be very helpful to people who have trouble take the weight off, my wife and I included.
My son has Celiacs and we are grateful for the growth of gluten-free items. Our family wishes we could return to the days of walking into any restaurant and ordering whatever, but we realize those days are now past.
The bottom line seems to be that no one really understands the whole gluten issue and why it seems to be manifesting itself with more frequency in the general population.
Yeah, I understand the yuppie fad gluten-free thing, but for a lot of people it isn't a fad. I too used to roll my eyes at people who I thought were being far too sensitive to the whole diet allergy thing as being granola crunching wanna bes, but whatever is happening out there, it's real.
The man didn’t say that for legitimate celiac sufferers the problem is yeast. They’re talking about the recent increase of people who complain of distress from processed bread, that is far beyond the normal rate of celiac disease.
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It is surprising how many foods do contain gluten which you might not suspect at first.
For example, some brands of lunchmeat include gluten from some types of "maltodextrin" (which may or may not contain gluten, depending on the type of maltodextrin used), and many nuts are processed in equipment that also processes wheat (read the "ingredients" on bags/jars of nuts), and so forth.
"Red Vines" candy are made with wheat (believe it or not), and like someone else here said, various types of ice cream and ice-cream-shop milk shakes (and all kinds of other foods) include wheat/rye/barley flour for cheap thickening purposes, or "maltodextrin", for whatever that does for the products.
A man named Dr. William Davis contends that "the wheat of today is different from the wheat of 1960, thanks to extensive genetics manipulations [genetic engineering] introduced to increase yield-per-acre".
In his Wheat Belly Book, he discusses that issue in depth, and gives evidence for his assertions. That (he claims) is the reason so many more people are experiencing these kinds of symptoms these days, even though they hadn't experienced them in the past. (It is, of course, a very simple matter to experiment to see if eliminating gluten also eliminates those kinds of extremely painful symptoms experienced with people with various degrees or forms of gluten intolerance.) (By the way, there is a wide spectrum of many different forms and degrees of "gluten intolerance" -- it is not just encountered in "Celiac Disease".)
I personally know that some people who suffer from "gluten intolerance" will get extremely painful upper-leg/thigh cramps (and other cramps), that are very difficult to get out of without using "quinine pills", whenever they eat foods containing gluten.
(Trust me, not many people would completely give up real gravy, and stuffing, and beer, and bread, and hoagies, and spaghetti, and cakes, and pies, and cookies, etc., if they did not have a very good reason to do that.)