Of course, most people don't have gluten-related inflammatory conditions, so whole wheat is good for them!

In fact, it's statistically rare. Unless you mean that self-diagnosed wannabe celiac stuff.

It's called gluten intolerance (or sensitivity), not "self-diagnosed wannabe celiac stuff" and last time I checked it affected something like 5% of the US population (some state the incidence rate is as high as ~20%).

Most people just live with the stomach discomfort because it's difficult to try a gluten-free diet. And dismissive comments like yours also aren't helpful in motivating people to experiment.

I lived with stomach issues for 30+ years, and after trying a myriad of solutions, from eliminating dairy to exercise, I finally tried eliminating gluten from my diet. That did the trick.

Exactly. The jury is still out on exactly how prevalent gluten intolerance is, but the percentage is definitely a lot higher than most would guess.

A second problem is that there is a whole spectrum of how intolerant people can be to gluten. Some people will simply find they are a little more constipated or gassy the next day if they eat gluten and some will find that they need to urgently visit the restroom 30 minutes after consuming it. Neither of those groups of people would be considered celiacs. Many of the people in those groups go through live oblivious as to the cause.

Unfortunately, ignorance like that of lysol's grandparent comment dominates this debate. It's amazing and a bit scary the number of otherwise intelligent people who blindly assume that what is true for them is true for everyone. It's as if the mere fact that some people prefer to avoid gluten in their diets is a personal affront to them. It baffles me.

6 years for me, and it was basically gone in two days after cutting gluten from my diet.

Most people don't realize that they too have gluten issues.

I thought I didn't have any issues with gluten until I stopped eating it for a month. Now if I eat gluten I get a headache almost immediately afterwards.

Edit: This was a reply to Kunai, asserting that gluten is an inflammatory agent.

I'm married to a woman with a dietetics degree. We have discussed this subject. She has read papers on the topic, and knows the literature.

You, I am guessing, are a software developer, who, in all likelihood has not read the literature on this subject (if this assumption is incorrect i would be happy to stand corrected).

It mystifies me how people stand so sure of themselves and claims such as "gluten is an inflammatory agent", despite the fact that grains have been consumed by vast numbers of humans for millennia, the absence of evidence that it causes disease, and the fact that no causal links have been proposed between gluten and causing Celiac disease†.

†: my wife says that if you are strongly predisposed to Celiac (which has a genetic component), then yes, consuming gluten may exacerbate your condition. However the idea that you can take an otherwise healthy (or heck even unhealthy) person, force them to gorge on gluten to give them Celiac is definitely wrong.

My genetic markers for gluten were negative, but I do have IBD, and consuming any gluten at all usually causes a marked exacerbation of my symptoms. I am not well-versed in dietetics; although my parents are both physicians, and have seen many patients with Celiac disease and a predisposition towards gluten sensitivity, whereas 20 years ago there were very few. Other physicians have asserted similar stances.

It's not empirical, but if you have any evidence that suggests otherwise, I would gladly be corrected.

When it comes to the medical literature, I'm even cautious about doctors claims. Dr. Oz is a doctor, but he's a cardiac surgeon. So when he makes claims about the healthiness of palm oil (which is solid at room temperature, and is only healthy by comparison to lard), he is abusing his credibility as an MD.

Here's a summary of the literature about Celiacs which my wife linked me to: https://www.clinicalkey.com/topics/pediatrics/celiac-disease...

You'll note in the epidemiology section that Celiacs to genetics. The disease is prevalent primarily in western european populations (or populations descended from western europe), and has actually shown a decrease in non-european descended populations.

(My wife also notes that in the Infant Diet section it does say that if you feed gluten to infants it can increase their chance of Celiac's. This is true if you have genes which predispose you to Celiac's. If you do not have the genes, you can't develop Celiac's. And even if you do have the genes, you can go throughout your life w/o developing Celiac's, although apparently being fed gluten early in life does increase your risks. Seems more like a thing about feeding infants than it does about gluten really.)

Edit: My wife also points out that Celiacs diagnoses prior to 1997 were done via biopsy (which is of course, invasive, when we're talking about intestines). After 1997, and the availability of a simple blood screening test, testing for Celiac's has become cheaper, easier, and more prevalent. That certainly must contribute to the increased number of diagnoses.

It's not like skipping gluten is a major hardship. Basically empty calories anyway. Why defend it?

The point is not defending gluten per se. This is defense of sane eating, not allowing fear mongering, and killing dieting fads.

Well, lactose intolerance and gluten intolerance aren't dieting fads. I silently sneered at those labels, until I realized 6 years ago that I might have been lactose intolerant for the prior 10 years. (Now I know so.) And I felt the same way about gluten intolerance, until... 1 month ago. Now I realize that I have gluten intolerance. My intolerance for lactose is fairly strong, and for gluten, it's fairly weak, but now I know why I get stomach cramps and breakouts on my lower face. 75% of the world has at least some degree of lactose intolerance.

Maybe because people have been eating wheat based products for the whole extent of human history without having health issues ?

I hate the words "empty calories". It's an oxymoron. Calories cannot be "empty", they are fuel for the body, they always have been.

Only years of fad-diets and food industry advertising could have turned a staple of human evolution as bread as something "evil".

Bread (and others) have provided the fuel to build civilization, true. However, they are man-made foods. When was the last time you saw a chimpanzee or caveman enjoying a loaf of bread, plate of pasta, etc?

As it has only existed since the dawn of agriculture, your tying of it to evolution is incorrect.

When was the last time you saw a caveman or a chimpanzee flying on an airplane or using a computer?

I was speaking of evolution in broad terms (as in, social and technological evolution as a race) not strictly in terms of darwinian evolution.

It's a major hardship if it's important for you to be able to participate in social situations that revolve around food.

>It's not empirical

I'm going to stop you right there and say that evidence is empirical.

I'll believe personal experience and observation over some conclusion from a published paper that used obscure statistical methods, possibly lied, got paid to publish a pre-determined finding and found a 2% significance of some occurrence of something with some caveats thrown in.

The ADA has no interest in preventing or curing diabetes as curing diabetes would end the institution. The AMA isn't interested in getting people healthy and proper treatment because that would eliminate the need of such an organization. The only reason Snickers isn't in the food pyramid is only because people aren't that stupid... yet.

http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/idiocracy...

You're both wrong and mongering conspiracy theories.

Sure, the Academy has its flaws, and there are bad actors who are out there just for fame and money who will lie to enrich themselves. But that's doubly true for the "health food" industry and people who claim to be nutritionists.

Humans are terrible at introspection regarding health matters. Absolutely horrible. This is one of the reasons why double-blind test protocols exist.

And so, even if you are so paranoid as to think that the American Medical Association is engaged in some mass conspiracy to keep people sick, unless you are also writing off all health care researchers, you've got to admit that there are people who are trying to help people, and help cure disease (which lets face it, we're actually pretty damn good at, all things considered).

> I'll believe personal experience and observation over some conclusion from a published paper that used obscure statistical methods

Then you are in good company. There are many reports of villages complaining about wireless towers causing headaches and other health issues... even when it later turned out the towers were not even active. I read an interview today with Bill Gates, who noted that one of the biggest problems the Gates Foundation has encountered in its efforts to eradicate certain diseases is that 10-20% of the people hear rumors of vaccines being bad and refuse to take them.

I'm a bit confused by your statement; are you saying you trust your own experience (sample size: 1) over any published science? That seems fundamentally flawed.

It only takes one counterexample to nullify a hypothesis. That is the epitome of science.

The t-test isn't science in the strictest sense. It's a statistical method which informs us of probabilities and distributions.

If I find that eating fruit makes me fatter while a study concludes that it makes people skinnier, do I believe my own experience or the study?

Whole grains are absolutely a healthy choice in food, unless you have Celiac disease. What you're saying equates to calling nuts unhealthy because many people have nut allergies, but this is obviously the exception, not the rule.

Healthy in relation to what, donuts? In comparison to meat, vegetables, nuts, and fruit, I'd say whole grains aren't a very good choice. Any food that readily breaks down into carbohydrates (and by extension, sugar) should be avoided except on occasion. I'm looking at you potatoes.

By your own standards, fruit also fails.

Legumes are probably the best source of carbohydrates with a low glycemic load, so you shouldn't forget about them.

> Whole grains are absolutely a healthy choice in food, unless you have Celiac disease.

Even with celiac disease: that just eliminates certain grains.

Thanks to pyridoxine glucoside, B6 from cereal grain products is absorbed with far less efficiency than that from animal foods

Comparative vitamin B-6 bioavailability from tuna, whole wheat bread and peanut butter.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6655507

the high phytate content of whole grains binds to minerals such as iron, calcium, magnesium, and zinc in the gastrointestinal tract, significantly reducing their absorption by the body

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673673...

EFFECTS OF PURIFIED PHYTATE AND PHYTATE-RICH BREAD UPON METABOLISM OF ZINC, CALCIUM, PHOSPHORUS, AND NITROGEN IN MAN

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1657026

Effects of dietary fiber and phytic acid on mineral availability

It has long been recognized that high cereal grain consumption induces vitamin D deficiency in various animal species, including primates, our closest animal relatives. By studying the fate of radio-labelled vitamin D, researchers observed significantly increased excretion of vitamin D in healthy human volunteers fed sixty grams of wheat fiber daily.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6299329

Reduced plasma half-life of radio-labelled 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 in subjects receiving a high fiber diet.

Full analysis:

http://anthonycolpo.com/the-whole-grain-scam/

Well, then I'd take it that many schools banning peanut butter outright due to the fractional number of kids with peanut allergies is... overreaction?

No, it's appropriate to the severity of the allergic reaction, unless you can show me similarly severe cases with gluten as the following:

http://fox13now.com/2013/04/26/boy-11-dies-after-severe-alle...

I wondered about this, so I looked up the prevalence of peanut allergies in the US. Here's an abstract:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10200001

This includes tree nut allergies as well. The short of it is that 0.6% of children under 18 in this study were found to have peanut or tree nut allergies. If this is true, that means many schools will probably have fewer than 5 students with the allergy.

In this case, outright bans seem to be more about reducing potential liability in the face of activist or litigious parents than they are actually addressing a student health issue.

Or to avoid kids accidentally killing each other with peanut butter.

Banning peanut butter would help with that, but it couldn't stop there. Plenty of packaged foods contain peanuts or other nuts, or are processed on equipment which processes those things. Foods are often repackaged by parents such that labels are not available.

My understanding of this type of reaction is that it doesn't require a large volume of the allergen to cause a very serious response. Trace amounts can be very dangerous. So it seems impossible to guarantee prevention by banning foods.

In my opinion, kids need to be aware of what they can and cannot eat, and the school must be prepared to actually deal with a reaction situation instead of just saying 'look, we banned peanut butter, what else do you expect?'

People don't have allergic reactions to airborn gluten like they do peanuts. It is not the same.

Peanut allergies can kill a kid pretty quickly. While it is a very small percentage of people who react strongly enough to it, if you've got a kid in the school with a known hypersensitivity, banning is not a bad idea.

Anaphylaxis from food can take a while (up to an hour or two I believe) to set in. When it does, it can cut off an airway, and then you're basically racing against suffocation with an epipen. If the kid's outside at recess or in the bathroom alone or just slow to tell a teacher, you're in a bad situation.

I don't know how much gluten it takes to trigger some of the scarier symptoms of IBD or if any of them are lethal in children. My guess is they're not, just because I haven't heard of gluten bans in schools.

Well, this is anecdotal, but I'm 14, and a few slices of bread landed me in the hospital with two emergency blood transfusions, and a final diagnosis of IBD.

It was... bad. Another classmate also ended up hospitalized with a celiac diagnosis. Whether it was brought on by food, I don't know, but the prevalence of wheat in a standard American diet could lead one to believe so.

A single peanut can cause an anaphylactic reaction which can be lethal in minutes. IBD symptoms from consumption of slices of bread is not remotely comparable.

EpiPen. Kids should carry them and know how to use them. Schools should not prevent them from carrying them.

>Whether it was brought on by food, I don't know, but the prevalence of wheat in a standard American diet could lead one to believe so.

It definitely shouldn't.

Of course it is overreaction if the kids are above lets say 10.

It's risk mitigation, that's all. The concept of a kid going anaphylactic at your business is very unattractive.

Gluten free doesn't mean 100% of the gluten is removed from the food. So most people who are 'severely allergic' to gluten are really just convinced that is the case.

The last time I saw my cousin she looked and acted anorexic, meanwhile raving about her new gluten free vegan lifestyle. She looked terrible. My other cousin who suffers from narcolepsy was on the same diet raving about all her new energy while falling asleep at the table. Meanwhile I went from being the fattest person in the family to the most in shape in less than 10 months. I usually jokingly order a side of gluten these days, just to piss the gluten freers off.

Tip for American grocery shoppers: Don't hit the isles. Stay within the vegetable and fruits section, shop there, only there, then leave. That is a healthy diet. Usually there are nuts and meat in that section. Don't be looking for the gluten free potato chips and cookies, that isn't healthy.

> Tip for American grocery shoppers ...

As someone who has tried to hack his way out of unhealthy eating (and succeeded somewhat), I've found that the biggest grocery shopping tip is to go to the store just after a meal.

>> Don't hit the isles. Stay within the vegetable and fruits section, shop there, only there, then leave.

I really couldn't say it any better than this. Vegetables people. Get more of them. Fresh ones. Learn to enjoy onions and mushrooms.

I couldn't help but giggle at your choices - onions are not particularly healthy as far as vegetables go (better than potatoes, not as good as nearly any other veg) and mushrooms aren't vegetables. That said, I'm all for eating more vegetables (though fresh v. frozen is not an important consideration in my mind; I eat plenty of frozen peas, carrots, artichokes, and broccoli).

You knock the gluten avoiders and follow that up by saying you became healthy by staying to the periphery of the grocery store where the fruits/veggies/meats/dairy are (and not the grains/gluten)...

I think you just contradicted yourself entirely.

Well no, you just made my point for me. See, if that is gluten free, then I didn't know it. I am not gluten free I just eat healthy. I have accumulated knowledge of a healthy diet rather than a gluten free one. Good point though.

Gluten free means contains no gluten. What are you talking about?

Actually, gluten-free means that there's a very small proportion of gluten in relation to the product, not that 100% of it has been removed.

----

"The current international Codex Alimentarius standard allows for 20 parts per million of gluten in so-called "gluten-free" foods" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten-free_diet

----

It's enough to prevent exacerbation of symptoms for those with gluten sensitivity, but it's not a complete removal.

What I'm responding to is the fact that most foods don't contain gluten in the first place and people who are severely allergic to gluten know better than to eat foods in which gluten has been "removed" from the food through some chemical process (which is extremely rare, by the way, I can think of only one such product off the top of my head... much more common is accidental cross contamination which is a constant worry for celiacs and gluten intolerant people).

Celiacs don't even eat food prepared in the same production environment as foods that contain gluten. The sentiment that these people are deluding themselves because their very careful planned and meticulously controlled gluten free diets still contain gluten is preposterous.

You'd have to be crazy to mix gluten free and vegan diets.

Care to post your sources that show how gluten isn't healthy for those without an intolerance (celiac, IBD, etc)?

"There also appears to be an increased incidence of celiac disease, with one study which looked for antibodies from 1950s American blood samples finding that celiac disease is about four times as common as it was"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten-free_diet#Popularity_and...

"One study examined the effect of ω-5 gliadin, the primary cause of wheat dependent exercise/aspirin induced anaphylaxis, and found increased permeability of intestinal cells caused by this gliadin and another wheat albumin."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten_sensitivity#Gluten_toxic...

"Another line of research shows gliadin binds a chemoattractant receptor and causes increases of a factor that destroys tight junctions. These junctions prevent leakage around the cells that line the small intestine, resulting in the leaking of food proteins into the body."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten_sensitivity#Gluten_toxic...

Except that all kinds of auto immune diseases and alergies are rising across the board - so may be something else going on (An article in NYTimes recently suggested that we live in so (relatively) sterile environment that out immune system cannot calibrate itself and is going berserk with the smallest irritant)

The first study is correlative, not causative.

The second and third studies are a bit too specific. Can you break this down into a list of effects on every day people?

I think this quote sums it up best: "Gluten intolerance is one of the most popular self-diagnoses because of its over-expanded list of potential symptoms. The gluten scare is mostly an overblown hippy-fueled movement."

It seems like the jury is still out on how many people suffer from gluten sensitivity, or the extent of the negative effect of gliadin.

> A 2011 panel of celiac experts concluded that there is a condition related to gluten other than celiac disease and named it "non-celiac gluten sensitivity".[51] however, for those without celiac disease or gluten sensitivity, the diet is unnecessary.

Here's one:

Gluten causes gastrointestinal symptoms in subjects without celiac disease: a double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21224837

On a visual analog scale, patients were significantly worse with gluten within 1 week for overall symptoms (P=0.047), pain (P=0.016), bloating (P=0.031), satisfaction with stool consistency (P=0.024), and tiredness (P=0.001).

I am someone who at this stage in life seems to have^ an issue with gluten.

Lots of people aren't like me though, and for them I do not believe there is any particularly well documented issues when it comes to gluten.

^Where 'seems to have' is self-produced anecdata: I spend months working through food group diet permutations (starting with removing basically except lightly cooked vegetables, miso soup and congee :-/) in an attempt to zero in on what was causing near-permanent (~10am->sleeping) acid reflux I had developed. Conclusions point fairly strongly to gluten, which I now mostly stay away from (I still eat it occasionally, zomg burgers, I just make sure breads/pasta/etc isn't the base of my diet).

>Wheat contains gluten, a known gastrointestinal irritant, and celiac and IBD patients know that wheat is one thing you want to stay away from.

Yes, and anyone allergic to strawberries know they should be avoided as well.

One demonstrative experiment is to go cold turkey on grains for a few weeks, then try eating something like a bagel or two. When I did this, I found that eating wheat products made me feel sick. Been largely avoiding grains since (though I "cheat" from time to time)

That's true of a lot of foods. Definitely true of meat, especially red meat. I don't think the fact that your stomach has to spend some time adapting to a food is really evidence that it's categorically bad for you.

>That's true of a lot of foods. Definitely true of meat, especially red meat.

I'd definitely be interested in a citation if you have one! I find this really interesting, especially since I've accidentally cut red meat out of my diet recently (despite enjoying it quite a lot, so I don't want to be ill next time I have it!), so I'm wondering on what sort of timescales these effects happen (both losing and gaining the ability to digest a certain food group).

I don't have a research paper to cite, but it seems fairly common knowledge that people who go vegetarian for a while --either by choice or by moving somewhere meat is scarce-- often have a period of re-adjustment when they return to eating meat; especially red meat. This is on a time scale of a few months in each direction.

This is not a universal truth -- I was raised vegetarian and began eating red meat in college; I never had an adjustment period. In fact, I suspect the incidence of this is greatly overstated and largely psychological.

You could do the same with lots of foods. If you don't eat veggies for a while, the same thing happens the first vegetable you eat.

really? Every time I go non-vegetable, they taste and feel awesome when I come back to them!

I find that if I become addicted to junk food after a binge weekend, simply fasting for 24hours makes me craaave healthy foods like vegetables, even spinach which I usually hate, and white meats. Its weird, but I recommend at least 24 hours of fasting each week. Its a great system reset.

It seems that celiac disease and nut allergy is something specific to US.

Not at all. Diagnostics may be more common at the US, or mis-diagnostics. Or maybe they are just over reacting to those two problems.

But both problems happen all over the world.

I feel a Wheat Belly debate coming on.