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Gluten free is a pot load.
According to a new study, a gluten-free diet has no health benefits for most people.
In addition, they spend two to three times more money to follow the unnecessary trend.
Take Matt Hopper, a 32-year-old Washington, DC, nurse who gave up gluten and stopped eating bread and pasta in 2011. He says his health has not improved, but he has lost a lot of dough.
At the time, Hopper worked part-time at Whole Foods and suffered from various stomach problems. While he watched the shelves fill with trendy gluten-free products, he wondered if they could heal from what was tormenting him.
"All these celebrities talked about giving up gluten and being healthy," Hopper told The Post. "Then I self-diagnosed myself."
For a year, he stopped eating gluten – proteins found in some grains such as wheat, rye and barley – but his stomach problems persisted.
"I did not feel better about the energy or the reaction of my gastrointestinal system to food," he says. The only major change he noticed was the economic burden of spending "about $ 100 more per month" in groceries for "flourless chocolate cakes".
The US market for gluten-free products accounted for $ 2.7 billion in 2018, according to a report published in 2019 by Research and Markets. On Instagram, the hashtag #glutenfree has nearly 28 million messages. The best selling books call cereals "silent killers" and promise that reducing them is "your way back to health".
But for the vast majority of people, the diet is only expensive BS. Researchers say gluten-free foods cost up to 139% more than bulk-based wheat products.
The study published in this month's Gastroenterology journal by researchers at the University of Sheffield, England, found that eating gluten flour was safe for healthy people. This is the first ever double-randomized controlled trial to prove it, even though experts have been saying for years.
"It's the destruction of myths," said Dr. David Sanders, professor of gastroenterology at the University of Sheffield and author of the study. "There is no negative effect of gluten if you have no symptoms of celiac disease", an immune disease that can be determined by blood tests and biopsy, "or a sensitivity to non-celiac gluten "in which but improve with avoiding gluten. Both are rare.
"I see patients on a gluten-free diet every day and do not need to," said Dr. Benjamin Lebwohl, a gastroenterologist at New York-Presbyterian / Columbia Medical Center at Columbia University in Washington. Heights. In some cases, he notes, patients have stomach problems, but they may be due to irritable bowel syndrome or other problems.
Rebecca Ditkoff, a registered dietician based in Manhattan, says patients often ask her if gluten should be removed to lose weight. She exhorts them not to.
"People think that gluten-free foods are healthier, but in many cases they are actually less healthy," she says. These foods are often more processed, contain more fat and sugar and less fiber than their gooey counterparts.
Kasey Cook, 34, initially thought that she felt better after she stopped eating gluten last August, but her digestive problems then came back.
"After about a week, the same stomach symptoms I had just reappeared," says the Vermont Health and Fitness Coach. She started eating gluten again and went to the doctor to be tested for allergies. She is still waiting for the results.
Hopper, meanwhile, always tries to understand what is behind his gastrointestinal problems. But he is happy to return to eating normal pasta.
"I just missed eating delicious foods," he says.
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