Page 223 - How to Be a Conscious Eater - Making Food Choices That Are Good for You

neighbor—you don’t even realize how bad you feel. But you
deserve to be the best version of you; going gluten-free can
help you get there. I tried it myself, and I feel amazing.”
In reality, far more of us avoid gluten than need to. About 1 percent
of Americans have celiac disease, which is a serious autoim-
mune disorder. Those people are advised to strictly follow a
gluten-free diet. Another 6 percent or so have non-celiac glu-
ten sensitivity, a milder condition tied to digestive problems
and other symptoms that does not result in a positive test for
celiac disease; observing whether symptoms improve after a
trial elimination of gluten is the main method of diagnosis.
For everyone else, a gluten-free diet is not advised by nutrition
experts. Still, a 2013 report by the NPD Group, a market research
firm, found that as many as one in three Americans were try-
ing to avoid gluten. That’s more Americans than have a gym
membership or can name all three branches of government.

SOME UNINTENDED RISKS AND CONSEQUENCES OF
GOING GLUTEN-FREE WITHOUT MEDICAL NECESSITY:
Risky replacement ingredients. Once the gluten in a processed food
product gets removed, it typically needs to be replaced. And
the junk fillers replacing gluten are usually blood-sugar-
spiking refined flours such as tapioca starch, potato starch, or
rice starch. One large US study found that people on a gluten-
free diet had double the arsenic and mercury levels of those
who ate gluten. The top suspect? Rice. Now, rice is not inher-
ently bad, but again, the dose makes the poison. As we know,
cutting out one thing in the diet almost always means replac-
ing it with something else. Gluten abstainers should consider
whether replacement foods are in fact less hazardous.

Salt and sugar overload. Comparisons of gluten-free foods with
equivalent products that contain gluten show that the former

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