Gluten is the protein in wheat, barley and rye. It has received a lot of attention lately, as more and more people are cutting gluten out of their diets.
Celiac disease is an auto-immune disease where a person is allergic to gluten and eating it causes their immune system to attack the lining of the gastrointestinal tract. This causes an array of unpleasant symptoms including pain and diarrhea. It affects 1% of the population.
Gluten sensitivity describes the remaining number of people who can not tolerate gluten (the stats are 6% or a lot more depending on where you look). There is no allergy, no immune response, and no damage to the lining of GI tract but still symptoms. Gluten is hard to digest and can cause diarrhea, cramping, gas, bloating, headaches, brain fog, or skin rashes. Cutting out gluten removes these symptoms.
Another portion of the population is giving up gluten because they are trying to be more healthy (jumping on the dump gluten bandwagon). I think this is fine. Given that gluten is found in wheat and wheat is highly processed and processed foods are at best useless (and at worst, very bad for you. stay tuned for a future post). But some people think this is just a silly fad.
A study came out recently where gluten sensitivity was actually tested. One group was fed gluten, and other groups were not, but all groups were blind to what they were being fed. Thus preventing bias. And the gluten group did NOT have more symptoms than the control groups. Pretty solid evidence against the existence of gluten sensitivity, huh?
No study is definitive and there were still confounding variables (such as FODMAPs) Here is an article that totally refutes the study point by point and brings the possibility of gluten sensitivity back to life. Or perhaps just wheat sensitivity. Since this research study was giving participants isolated gluten, it doesn’t tell us much about the real world (who sits around eating isolated gluten apart from food?). Perhaps it is wheat that gives people those symptoms and not gluten or a combination of all the components in wheat, including gluten. But you know your own body, and if cutting out gluten solves your problems, that’s compelling research for you.