It breaks the HN guidelines to insinuate astroturfing unless you have evidence. Please don't do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
People having opposing views isn't evidence of 'stealth marketing', it's evidence that the community is big and, on most things, divided. Meanwhile the "astroturfer under every bed" trope is one of the toxins that poisons internet communities—if it doesn't kill, it causes brain damage. Therefore we all need to resist the temptation to go there, unless there's really evidence, in which case you should email us at [email protected] so we can investigate and ban offenders.
Overwhelmingly the true hypothesis is the null one: people just disagree. The assumption that no one could possibly hold opinion X in good faith, so therefore they must be shilling, is imaginary. Such accusations in the threads are toxic, so we don't allow it unless there's some indication of more than imagination at work. This has been HN policy for years now and I've posted a ton about it: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
It is possible that non-celiac gluten sensitivity is a real condition which merely has not been adequately researched yet. If it is real, it is a disservice to mock and be so opposed to people trying to conduct an elimination diet to discover their food intolerance.
As someone with celiac, the more people avoid gluten, the better for me, so I am biased. Currently the world is swimming in it and it’s very difficult to avoid.
More like: "The idea that it is generally beneficial to be avoiding gluten is harmful for people with celiac."
Yesterday I had lunch with a friend with a gluten allergy as confirmed by blood test and endoscopy. Obviously he should avoid gluten.
People who think that gluten "is bad" should keep their mouth shut or get an actual diagnosis showing it's actually bad for them.
Those without an actual allergy who make a fuss over it desensitize the food service industry, and people at large, to the severity of the problem in people with a legitimate allergy.
In my case my daughter has diagnosed celiac and we eat out quite a bit. The number of dietary options both out at restaurants as well as at the supermarket, the general level of education around what even is gluten, I believe has greatly benefited from non-celiac positive people preferring gluten-free food (for whatever cockamamie reason they may have).
If it was not a dietary trend I don’t think we would have nearly the number of options, and certainly not entire gluten free menus at restaurants available to choose from.
When you try to be selective about your food, often there is struggle about it with others. While trying to debug my health, I was a vegetarian for years. For some reason many people are opposed to others being vegetarians or vegans, for reasons that seem too complex to analyze here. Importantly, though these diets have been proven to be healthy, but many people still act strongly opposed to others practicing them.
My experience at restaurants is that people are usually cool when I tell them I have a severe medical condition. However, I am so sensitive to gluten that I cannot eat at restaurants at all. Wheat is simply far too common, and they will never be ready for my level of sensitivity. The thing is, not all people with celiac are this sensitize or have symptoms they can notice. With people with mild or imaginary gluten conditions, food preparers can mess up significantly and the customer won’t come back and say ‘wow, you made me incredibly sick’ because they might not even have any ill effects. So, it essentially creates false negatives for their kitchen performance. Again, doesnt matter because I eat a strict medical diet and will never be able to eat at average restaurants.
One note, I realize you generally mean intolerance or sensitivity, but I have to point out celiac is not an allergy, it’s an automummune disease triggered by gluten.
Sorry it took me a few days to reply.
As I understand it, some cows produce milk with A1 protein and some cows produce milk with A2 protein. In normal milk these two types get mixed together indiscriminately. The A2 product is simply a matter of identifying the A2 cows and only using their milk.
Most people are not gluten intolerant. But a few people are. A nice side-effect of the gluten-free bullshit is that these legitimate sufferers have many more food options available to them in shops and cafes.
I sometimes order a gluten free brownie because it looks delicious. And sometimes I walk up the ramp that was intended for wheelchairs.
It's a mixed bag on the gluten free thing, with more availability of GF foods but the GF label not meaning crap to a real Celiac sufferer anymore.
But nobody has an a1 allergy. This is just making the fad without the medical condition existing at all. So in this case, no, there is no benefit, aside from redistributing wealth from the feebleminded to the "job creators". Some people think that's a good thing.
No, for people without Celiac’s, NCGS, gluten ataxia or a wheat allergy gluten-free eating is a fad diet [1].
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23253599
And not that Huff Post is a health go-to (but nor is Wikipedia):
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23253599
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Séralini_affair#Retraction
[3] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ask-jj-gmos_b_9547198.h...
I believe that the popular opinion by many is that they do not have NCGS. TV personalities like Bourdain drive this heavily by discussing how gf used to not really be a thing in restaurants, but now is quite popular.
My personal belief is that a lot of “gluten intolerant” people derive considerable benefit from a low-gluten diet because many low-gluten diets have less starch.
(Hint: look up what seitan is.)
And the irony is that milk has a component, lactose, that is legitimately indigestible for large numbers of people. It was gluten before gluten was gluten, except not BS! But products already exist for that, so they're glutenizing milk because, let's face it, a sucker is born every second and it ain't cheap sending kids to college these days.
Godspeed A2 milk, may the impoverishment of your customers reduce their propensity to procreate!
Preemptive edit: the stealth marketing is so so thick in this thread! Yuck!