The simple answer is yes, and no. Here’s why.
First of all, gluten is a component of the protein found in many grains, including wheat, barley, and rye. In the past decade, gluten sensitivity and gluten intolerance or Celiac’s disease have become common terms. Eliminating gluten from your diet has become another catch-all solution to indigestion, low energy and weight gain. Is there any biological foundation to this advice?
Let’s start with the reasons why eating gluten-free is more than just another food craze. Explaining why takes us all the way back to the dawn of civilization and the development of agriculture. Almost all of the foods we now commonly eat are hybridized, meaning different strains have been crossed or used to pollinate one another to reproduce certain desired qualities. Spelt is a grain that is the predecessor to modern wheat. Spelt also contains gluten, but hybridized, modern wheat has approximately 30 times the amount of gluten as spelt. Gluten is a sticky substance that gives bread its spongy texture, so wheat has been cultivated over time with increasing amounts of gluten, fair more than ever would be found naturally in a grain. About 1 in 133 people in developed nations have allergic reactions to gluten. This is a pattern we see in all kinds of food products; the more they are processed, the more they wreak havoc on our digestive system.
1) Get tested to find out if you are gluten intolerant or gluten sensitive. Many insurance providers will cover a simple blood test. The physician in my Manhattan office can order these tests to rule out an intolerance when beginning treatment. If you do not have insurance coverage, doing a gluten elimination diet for about 30 days will usually provide us with enough information.
2) If you are experiencing digestive symptoms such as bloating, low energy and unexplained weight gain, it may be that the other grains that contain smaller amounts of gluten do not cause the same aggravation. Rather than eliminating gluten completely from your diet, you may be able to just eliminate wheat and experience relief.
3) If you are taking the plunge and eliminating gluten from your diet, get advice from experts, or other people who have successfully made their gluten-free diet delicious and healthy such as Emily Turner.
