We live in an age of gluten-phobia, which some have pointed out is more religion than science.
That hasn't stopped many people from taking a firm stance on gluten. According to a new Gallup poll, Americans can now be divided according to their gluten beliefs: One in five report actively trying to include gluten-free foods in their diet, while 17 percent say they actively avoid gluten-free foods. The rest don't care either way.
There are a couple of funny things about this poll: If someone eats fruit and yogurt in the morning— naturally gluten-free foods — are they an active gluten avoider? Or are gluten avoiders only those seeking out foods labeled gluten-free? For the purposes of the poll, this seems to depend on how you perceive your relationship with gluten, a protein composite that gives shape to grains like wheat, rye, and barley.
The other funny thing this poll clearly demonstrates is that nearly half the population is thinking way too much about gluten for no good reason. In fact, the 58 percent of Americans who say they don't worry about gluten have it right. Here's why.
For most people, gluten shouldn't be given an extra thought
There are definitely some people who need to stay away from gluten. Celiac disease is a serious, diagnosable autoimmune condition that causes people's immune systems to violently attack their small intestine whenever they eat gluten. But only about 1 percent of Americans have celiac disease.
There is a much larger number of people cutting gluten from their diets in the hope of alleviating or avoiding a range of symptoms and diseases — including bloating, obesity, brain fog, Alzheimer's, and autism. And the evidence that this is a good idea is much, much less clear.
Sometimes these individuals consider themselves to have "non-celiac gluten sensitivity" or "non-celiac gluten intolerance." These folks usually report a range of general symptoms, including fatigue, headaches, gas, bloating, diarrhea, and gastrointestinal distress.
But there are no firm diagnostic criteria, nor are there gluten-sensitivity tests, so determining whether someone has this condition is very subjective: It mostly involves putting people on a gluten-free diet and seeing how they report feeling afterward. This poses a dilemma, of course, and makes a diagnosis subjective. Studies — such as this one in the journal Gastroenterology — have found that many people who think they have non-celiac gluten sensitivity actually don’t react to gluten. Some wonder whether gluten sensitivity truly exists, or if there's something else going on.
An alternative hypothesis suggests that people who say their symptoms improve on a gluten-free diet may actually be reacting to another set of carbohydrates in wheat called called FODMAPs (fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols). In other words, it's not the gluten that's bothering people, but other sugars found in wheat.
Still, research on this is in the very early stages. Many of the studies involving people with gluten sensitivity or FODMAPs diets are tiny, and the science is still very much working itself out.
"The vast majority of people who think they react to gluten don’t"
For now, non-celiac gluten sensitivity remains a little-understood condition in need of scientific validation and objective diagnostic criteria. Some people may turn out to have stomach problems brought on by gluten or something else that lurks in grains. But even then, the available research suggests it’s only a tiny fraction of the population (between 0.63 percent and 6 percent) that has any sensitivity to these foods. (Remember: In that recent Gallup poll, 20 percent of Americans say they're actively avoiding gluten.)
"The state of science right now, as best we know is this: The vast majority of people who think they react to gluten don’t," Alan Jay Levinovitz, author of the new book The Gluten Lie, told me in an interview. "There may be a small segment of the population sensitive to gluten and who don’t have celiac disease, and only time will tell if that really is something."
So the decision to abstain from gluten for a range of health benefits in no way reflects the current science, and we really do not have any evidence-based reason to believe that gluten is causing masses of people harm.
To learn more about gluten facts, read this.