<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>
Will be sharing more - as well as my own response soon.
The following link is a LA Times article that is closely related to
the article from The Bryan College Station Eagle, but very different
in some ways. Some sections are verbatim, others have been changed
entirely – like the caption. I'm not sure if they will post it online
- it was the Sun 27th article from the Health and Fitness section. The
editor has said he will email it to me. I will share when he does.
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-gluten7-2008jul07,0,6367449.story
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I think a GF diet can be as healthy or as unhealthy as one wants to
make it. Our Standard American Diet (SAD) is filled with processed
grains, chemicals, HFCS and all sorts of unhealthy stuff. I laugh
every time I hear doctors say that wheat needs to be added back in
because it is unhealthy to omit it. Even Dr. Fasano says no one
digests wheat well. Dr. William Davis, a cardiologist, says wheat
worsens the lipid profile and adds to visceral fat. Here are his blogs
on wheat and other high carb foods
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Wheat
People who eat gluten do not get B12 and folate from the grains - they
get it because the processed grain products are fortified with these
vitamins. GF grains are now often fortified too. Here are the foods
that are naturally high in folate - I don't see wheat
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=nutrient&dbid=63
Here is the info on B12
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=nutrient&dbid=107#foodsources
I for one take b12 and folate as supplements.
Is self diagnosis a money issue? Are doctors concerned about the
revenue they will loose if people go on a GF diet before they spend
thousands of dollars for blood and biopsy testing? If people continue
to eat gluten, they need continuing care and continuing medication. I
know I don't need to see my doctors as often as I did pre gluten free.
I don't need to take medications such as nuerontin or an
antidepressant. These were the medications offered to be before I
discovered gluten was making me ill. I did not need to get another
cardiac cath to see if I was reblocking. My shortness of breath and
edema disappeared when I went GF.
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Unless they know what some of us already discerned....gluten free
convenience foods are nutritionally deficit. We should be working to
eat in a gluten free way that provides nutritionally dense foods that
can satisfy anyone and can nourish anyone.
Lots of those kinds of vitamins in live fermented foods...gluten free
foods...like sauerkraut, kimchi, unpasteurized pickles, kefir,
kombucha and the list goes on. It's really all about eating whole
foods and not pre-packaged stuff.
Let's face it. The starch flours that make replacement bready things
possible for us are empty calories. (Yeah, I love gf bread, but it
needs to remain in its place...at the top of the food pyramid and not
the bottom.) The doctors know it. They only countenance it for the
celiac community because they know what the alternative is for the
truly gluten sensitive. But they don't care enough about us to hammer
the drum that the replacement stuff shouldn't take up the lion's share
of our diet...patients probably wouldn't listen. How hard is it to
convince people to go gf in the first place? And if we tell people
that the commercial stuff out there is largely nutritionally deficient
would be even harder to swallow.
Bottom line? It's possible to eat a gf diet that isn't filled with
nutrient null replacement foods and *anyone* would benefit from eating
that way.
---
What's interesting about it is that the statements about how the diet
is being over-marketed come from "Suzy Badaracco, president of
Culinary Tides, a company that forecasts food trends." However, those
who have positive things to say about the diet are primarily
dieticians. It's even worse in the third to last paragraph which
references dieticians having concerns about poor nutrition on the
diet- there, the last sentence quotes Badaracco again. So, is it
dieticians who don't approve or people who monitor food trends? And,
why are those food trend forecasters being quoted as though they have
some sort of medical expertise to impart? (I could go on and on about
the problems with this article.)
In short, the piece has some correct information, but it's hardly
thorough enough to be truly informative for someone who has no
knowledge of the diet. And, the contradictory way in which it was
written is misleading and would probably confuse someone who's new to
the diet for whatever reason they've decided to try it. This is the
perfect article for those folks who refuse to "believe" in celiac
disease and just want the rest of us to stop complaining, give up this
fad diet, and eat the gluten we're served.
---
well, going gluten free is both unhealthy and healthy. If you need to
be gf, it beats dying of colon cancer and the other things that
happens to us 'real' celiacs. but, at the same time, it IS low in
nutrition. So, yes, we do need to make sure we get nutrition. But that
is the point...
---
Don't worry about this. I've gotten that vibe before, when people
think I am restricting my diet as an option. Lots of people do it!
(think of most vegans...) We know what we are doing and why.
I would just ignore it. It is true -- some people are on the diet for
(little or) no reason. Go figure.
---
I guess we can expect some blowback. Happens every time a new diet
trend comes out: "Changing your diet can be dangerous!". Nevermind
that the average American diet is really, really, really bad from a
health standpoint. I love it when the vet tells me "be sure not to
feed your dog people food!". It's pretty bad when our diet isn't good
enough for a dog! It's not even good enough for a pig: people food
makes pigs sick.
The obvious response though is that NO ONE stays on ANY diet for a
huge length of time unless there is some worthwhile difference. The
research right now is indicating that something like 5 out of 6 people
have gut changes when they
eat gluten ... they don't get "celiac" but they do have problems. When
that sort of research hits the press,
more and more people will just start avoiding the stuff. Shoot, Paul
Newman started avoiding it in the 70s!
Gluten is a mild toxin, but it also has druglike effects, and no one
really wants to hear that they might have to give it up. Remember how
much resistance there was to the idea that cigarettes might cause
cancer? When doctors and nurses smoked in the hospital? And how silly
the idea was that cigarette smokers might have to do it outside the
office?
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