What Does a Gluten Free Diet Really Mean?

Scientists, journalists, celiac patients, and observers of the gluten-free trend have all begun to seriously question what a gluten-free diet means to them. While most people hold gluten as a known agitator for celiac disease, its potential effects on a broad array of other health concerns for all people have been theorized over the past few years, which include dementia, heart disease, and obesity. 

Articles like “Science Has Begun Taking Gluten Seriously” by James Hamblin of The Atlantic take a more cynical approach to the gluten-free trend, claiming humans have been eating it for centuries and it never occurred to anyone to second-guess anything about it until ten years ago or so.

“If there was more than one lecture in medical school where gluten came up, I don’t remember it,” Hamblin says. “The one I remember was in 2007, in the context of celiac disease. After the lecturer mentioned ‘gluten,’ a classmate raised a hand and asked him to repeat himself. People who eat what? Of course gluten, which comes from wheat, rye, and barley, was all around us then, as it is now. It’s a sort of mortar in the walls of the modern food system, in so much of what we eat or otherwise ingest and apply to ourselves. But we were barely, if at all, aware of it.”

Hamblin continues to argue for the biggest reason he doesn’t think gluten is as catastrophic a problem as popular health culture would suggest: “The strongest evidence in gluten’s favor is that the longest-lived, healthiest populations on Earth have long eaten diets that include grain products.”

While mysteries are abundant and the exact specifics on celiac disease are not fully known, the medical field soundly unites its voice against gluten for celiac disease patients because of the negative and dangerous effects it has on their digestive system. For people without the disease, however, studies on gluten-free diets seem to suggest that taking on this diet might not be the healthiest option after all.

Health implications for a gluten-free diet for people who do not have celiac disease

As Hamblin notes, humans have been eating gluten for centuries as it is a component in wheat naturally found in bread. The key may be the amount we are ingesting, however, as super-processed foods with a long shelf life pack way more gluten than foods that traditionally have little to no preservatives and spoil faster. These types of foods are also widely seen in every supermarket across the nation.

Not only is gluten becoming more prominent in all categories of foods as well as in higher quantities, scientists also warn that the wheat we eat today is not the wheat that our ancestors had. Chemical engineering makes for rapid changes that the human body struggles, and sometimes fails, to adapt to.