Gluten

People with celiac disease are sensitive to gluten, which is a protein found in wheat.

Less than 1% of the American population has even the mildest form of this disease, but at least 20% of SWPLs think they have this disease and demand gluten-free products.

Wheat can be processed to remove the gluten, which is why you see stuff like gluten-free bread in SWPL health food stores, but eating gluten-free products if you don’t have celiac disease is stupid, because you are removing the protein from the wheat, and you need protein to live. Gluten is a completely harmless source of nutrition for 99% of Americans.

* * *

If you think you might have celiac disease, you should NOT just stop eating gluten, you should go to gastroenterologist and get a diagnosis. There's a fairly accurate blood test.

Comments

[RandyB]

SWPLs are at war with protein. Like Mr. Bumble from Oliver Twist, they think meat and similar makes people aggressive.

[dearieme]

Oats. Eat oats.

[davver]

Protein = Muscles
Muscles = Masculinity
SWPL = Anti-Masculinity

Therefore protein is bad. SWPLs can occasionally be obsessed with being "in shape" but its always of the cardio intensive marathon running variety.

[bluto]

Well how else is one going to fulfill their massive narcissism than by demanding special food products and menus to signify their importance.

Newsflash: many other food alergies aren't real either.

[sfer]

20% seems pretty high. nobody I actually know says that they are sensitive to gluten. 3% of Americans are gay and I know a lot more gay people than people who say they are sensitive to gluten.

[hm]

Good for me. I love to cook pure gluten dishes. Let swpls eat carb and I eat protein. good deal.

[albert magnus]

"SWPLs are at war with protein."

Last I checked SWPLs were all into paleo-primal diets and CrossFit, though they have moved to something new.

[Peter]

Few things are trendier than having a trendy disease. Even if you don't actually have it.

[Polynices]

Lots of folks in the SWPL demographic are convinced they have any number of bullshit "allergies" and food "intolerances" and gluten is just one of them. It's all part of the "alternative medicine" quackery that's been rampant in the last 15 years.

[johnny]

The Paleo Diet recommends avoiding all grains, and not just wheat. And eating lots of lean meat. Very high protein. Personally I have done this and feel significantly better. Less inflammation, etc. More muscles too.

[rob]

Yes if you try to read about diets online you get a flood of "paleo" advocates. Some of the more prominent have been hospitalized in the past for their eating disorders. One of the tenants of paleolithic nutrition is avoidance of gluten grains, or maybe all grains. Paleo is very SWPL.

[jeanne]

It was suggested to me that I had celiac disease, just for asking a question at a diabetes forum. Some people are not happy unless they convince others they are impaired. The sick collect maladies the way SWPLs collect passport stamps.

However, I am reducing wheat-based carbs now, after realizing what a crock the food pyramid was.

[kkrv]

There is reason to think that eating gluten grains just isn't that good an idea for anyone, not only for "celiac" people. Wheat consumption in populations appears tied to all kinds of things like heart disease and arthritis.

http://www.archevore.com/panu-weblog/2009/6/23/the-argument-against-cereal-grains.html

[Jeffv]

Wrong. Gluten can do damage to the lining of anyone's stomach. Those who have a long history with wheat have better immunity to it though. Part of the problem is that anyone can eat wheat and not feel anything wrong. But it is the cumulative damage that gluten does over time that makes wheat bad for you.

[Haven't picked a nickname yet]

Some people think gluten makes their kids autistic. There is no medical/scientific basis for this dumb idea, but it's enough to drive a gluten-free industry.

I've met a few gluten-free adults. They haven't claimed to have celiac disease, but they do claim to feel better and have fewer digestive issues. "Whatever," say I.

At a recent professional conference I attended, the organizers provided for the anti-gluten crowd. I think they rather overprovided, since the good muffins were devoured quickly while the crummy gluten-free pastries sat there until they were cleared away for lunch (which was vegan; Portland is a crazy city).

[Mild Speculation]

It could still be the case that avoiding gluten makes everyone better off (in terms of health) even if some people don't notice acute symptoms, but I agree that the need to avoid gluten is overblown.

I think the main thing is that a lot of gluten-containing foods are just crappy...there are a lot better ways to get calories than bread, pasta, and chips. Replacing all these things with gluten-free versions isn't the answer, and that's where the SWPLs fall into a big marketing trap.

[137]

Black sesame powder. It goes good with oats.

[Engineer]

it always shocks me how ill-informed the commentators on this site are. they seem to have an irrational hatred of SWPLs, when in reality almost all of the good things about America have come from them. Tell me, honestly, how many of you would willingly move away from Boston or San Fran or New York in order to live in Wyoming or Kansas?

The reason there is a movement away from gluten isn't because "SWPLs hate protein, and are anti-masculinity". It is because a diet that is filled with wheat is extremely unhealthy. Our stomachs have evolved over millions of years to digest a certain combination of food material. Our paleolithic ancestors survived on a diet of meat, fruits and vegetables exclusively. The introduction of gluten/wheat is the main cause of the massive obesity and diabetes rates the developed world is suffering from. Our bodies can simply digest meat, fruit and vegetables at a far more efficient manner.

Celiac's is a more extreme condition, but I would venture to say that the percent of people with some gluten insensitivity reaches the double-digits. And everyone would benefit from a gluten-free diet.

Dont believe me? Then go 6 months without eating any gluten, and tell me if you aren't in the best shape of your life. You'll feel better, be less sluggish and more energetic.

[SG]

Celiac disease combined with dairy intolerance resulted in my experiencing symptoms commonly associated with bipolar type II. Cutting gluten and dairy out of my diet almost completely eliminated these symptoms, and quite rapidly.

Here's my story about this in more detail: http://spiritualgrowth.blog.com/2011/08/02/hello-world/

[carol]

Teh nets are full of paleobots these days.

[davver]

Engineer,

"almost all of the good things about America have come from them"

Like what? Most of the things I like get made by engineers, scientists, doctors, etc. The people in my STEM classes, to the extent they even were white, were generally pretty secular-conservative and anti-SWPL. SWPL isn't the opposite of prole. SWPL is just people who are scared shitless of being associated with proles because they aren't that different from them past the superficial. Being SWPL comes from weakness and fear. The hyper zealotry of SWPLs is a defense mechanism.

"Boston or San Fran or New York in order to live in Wyoming or Kansas"

Boston and New York are major hubs because they were some of the first ports that Europeans could settle and thus they became big centers for old money. Money attracts money so it continues to this day. California has its own unique history but has something particularly important: the best weather in the entire country and beautiful natural countryside. If I'm rich I want to move to Cali for the weather and surroundings.

If you look at how Cali or NY are run they are complete basket cases. Totally dysfunctional states and cities flirting with outright bankruptcy despite enormous wealth. They survive in spite of themselves, coasting on natural advantages and history.

[davver]

SWPL in a three minute video form:
http://www.ifc.com/videos/portlandia-portland-dream-of-the-90s.php

[Darwin's Sh*tlist]

A relative has celiac, which is strange, because he's the only one anyone can think of in the family with it, and it's apparently genetic.

There's no "you think you might be sensitive to gluten" part of it. If you have celiac, gluten triggers a reaction that makes it impossible for you to absorb nutrients from anything. You can eat like a pig, feel full, but you're starving to death. And the sensitivity to gluten is pretty high. His family doesn't even cook with wooden spoons anymore because they might have traces of gluten on them.

But, I guess the SWPL preoccupation with it is helpful in that it drives a lot of new products to the market and gets a lot of old ones to update their labeling.

[Kudzu Bob]

Engineer is absolutely correct. Half Sigma and most of the posters on this site are indulging in nutritional creationism.

[Peter]

All I know is that a man who spent 14 years consuming absolutely nothing except hard-boiled eggs, Hostess Twinkies and Scotch whiskey was in excellent health.

[Name]

"There's a fairly accurate blood test"

It's actually notoriously inaccurate.

[I_Affe]

How did the paleo diet get so popular? At least popular on the internet sites I visit. A Pub med search for "paleo diet" only gives 11 results ("paleolithic diet" gets 66) While a google search brings up 2.5 million sites.

[Mild Speculation]

Paleotards love to attack a strawman version of the SWPL who hates meat, muscle, and eats expensive boxed junk from Whole Foods under the "organic" label.

The irony is that the paleotards are some of the biggest SWPLs themselves. Honestly, who would pay $70+ for shoes that mimic being barefoot.

This reminds me of Half Sigma's post on being rich enough to have an unpaid internship or to go abroad and study poverty.

[T-Bone]

"Replacing all these things with gluten-free versions isn't the answer, and that's where the SWPLs fall into a big marketing trap."

A gold mine those suckers are. My family has made quite a bit of $ from those fools.

[T-Bone]

"Tell me, honestly, how many of you would willingly move away from Boston or San Fran or New York in order to live in Wyoming or Kansas?"

Open space sucks! God forbid anyone would want to live on lots of acreage, keep horses and cattle or hike, farm, fish and/or shoot on their own property. Worst of all, I hear that the nights out there can be quiet. Then again, I have heard that many of them wealthy folks in the Big City have places out in them hokey parts, but I can't be sure...

[Patrick]

Your unwillingness to apply evolutionary science to things which contradict your knee-jerk anti-liberal spite is cartoonishly hypocritical.

There are sound evolutionary reasons for why humans have varying degrees of gastrointestinal ability to digest and metabolize wheat gluten.

This is a protein source which was unknown to most humans only 10,000 years ago.

Our digestive system hasn't uniformally evolved to fully exploit this protein in the same way that it has for animal protein.

For many people, gluten doesn't present a health hazard so much as it is a detriment to their comfort. Celiac disease can cause secondary issues such as lactose intolerance and respiratory problems.

Modern diets are loaded with gluten, but these items are highly-processed footstuffs which never existed in the ancestral environment.

The growing, harvesting, milling, refinement, and baking of mass quantities of gluten-laden food requires a higher level of organized, systematized civilization which we've only recently developed.

When the choice was often gluten or starvation, its easy to see what won out. But it is still relatively new to us and not everyone has the genetic predisposition to handle it.

This is a large part of the soundness of the Paleolithic Diet.

The fact that SWPLs want to have their cake and eat it gluten-free too is an acknowledgement that baked flour is a convenient, calorie-dense, easy to eat food which everybody enjoys when combined with large amounts of salt or sugar.

The trend is akin to vegetarians and vegans who eat highly processed vegetable protein in various applications that attempt to mimic meat, but it is actually based on biology rather than pseudoscience nutrition.

At any rate, all people should consume less wheat gluten.

[davver]

Mild Speculation,

How can it be a strawman if I interact with people like that on a daily basis. Life in a coastal city is to be surrounded by SWPL stereotypes all day.

[Commander Shepard]

@davver

Excellent points and I largely agree but there is a caveat to what you said. Affluent areas are pretty much all SWPL. Not necessarily elite but definitely upper class. I acknowledge that there is status posturing among some to signal that they aren't prole but as a whole this isn't the case.

"How did the paleo diet get so popular?"

Fitness and bodybuilding. The diet wasn't called "paleo" it was just refereed to as low carb/high protein or occasionally some name would be used on a variation of that. I never saw the name "paleo" used until I started reading "manosphere" blogs.

[sabril]

"Tell me, honestly, how many of you would willingly move away from Boston or San Fran or New York in order to live in Wyoming or Kansas?"

At this point, I wouldn't leave New York but that's mainly for family and job reasons. Anyway, I think you are confusing cause and effect. New York is an interesting place to live with a lot of job opportunities and therefore it attracts a lot of SWPLs.

[dearieme]

I have recently found that I'm allergic to Brazil nuts - one seems OK, but several is bad news. This allergy isn't mentioned on the Wikipedia page for brazils. After I realised the cause of my stomach problem I stumbled across a mention in Jim Watson's book on dna: it seems that it's a recognised problem with a protein in the nut. Almonds, walnuts and hazelnuts do me no harm.
http://www.allallergy.net/fapaidfind.cfm?cdeoc=184

[Gilbert P.]

How do we get those millions of paleo-dieters to take the next step? 'You liked the diet... Now try the paleo attitude.'

[albert magnus]

"How did the paleo diet get so popular?"

It was called Atkins when my mom went on it.

Nothing made me feeler crappier than going on a paleo-diet for a month.

[Tony]

"Paul Jaminet, who blogs at the terrific Perfect Health Diet, and his wife Shou-Ching Jaminet, have written a book of the same name, Perfect Health Diet."

...

"The book's main strength is its meticulous scientific documentation. References to the literature are on virtually every page, and the Jaminets never assert anything unconditionally; every claim is backed by scientific evidence. I consider myself fairly well-versed in the science in this area, and I've learned loads of new and important information from this book, and I plan to incorporate it into my dietary and supplementation routine. It's by far the best book on this topic I've ever read."

http://mangans.blogspot.com/2010/11/summa-paleolithica.html

[Tanizaki]

"It is because a diet that is filled with wheat is extremely unhealthy. Our stomachs have evolved over millions of years to digest a certain combination of food material. Our paleolithic ancestors survived on a diet of meat, fruits and vegetables exclusively. The introduction of gluten/wheat is the main cause of the massive obesity and diabetes rates the developed world is suffering from. Our bodies can simply digest meat, fruit and vegetables at a far more efficient manner."

Forgive me, but this statement is not scientific and betrays a fundamental ignorance regarding evolution. These people have obviously never heard of selective pressure.

Whenever I hear "we evolved to do X", I cringe, as if evolution ever stops. However, the fact is that evolution shows us that the neolithic man who eats grain rather than paleo "Grok" is the fittest.

Don't believe me?
Neolithic people who eat the products of agriculture: almost 7 billion.
Paleolithic hunter-gathers: almost extinct

What do these numbers tell you about selective pressure and which population is more fit?

Of course, people are generally quite content to leave their "paleo" living at food. They don't attempt to live paleo by forsaking central air conditioning, and they certainly don't get their paleo food the way "Grok" does. They are content to get their organic, grass-fed beef at Whole Foods. Koyati, the Maasai warrior, does not have that luxury.

[Tanizaki]

"Your unwillingness to apply evolutionary science to things which contradict your knee-jerk anti-liberal spite is cartoonishly hypocritical.

There are sound evolutionary reasons for why humans have varying degrees of gastrointestinal ability to digest and metabolize wheat gluten.

This is a protein source which was unknown to most humans only 10,000 years ago.

Our digestive system hasn't uniformally evolved to fully exploit this protein in the same way that it has for animal protein."

Your statement betrays a lack of understanding about evolution.

Who cares if gluten was unknown for only 10,000 years? Is there a time limit in evolution? No. Less than one percent of the population has celiac disease, which indicates that the population has adapted to gluten just fine. More people are allergic to shellfish, which is perfectly "paleo".

Believe it or not, not everything that a population experiences for the first time is a deadly poison. I am sure you understand the concept of antibiotic-resistance bacteria. Why can't you apply this concept to humans and accept the idea of gluten-digesting people? (assuming that gluten was ever harmful to the general population)

I highly recommend the book The 10000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution. While not directed at debunking the paleo movement, it certainly shoots down any notion that there hasn't been enough time for humans to "evolve to do X".

[Mild Speculation]

"Mild Speculation,

How can it be a strawman if I interact with people like that on a daily basis. Life in a coastal city is to be surrounded by SWPL stereotypes all day."

Fair enough. I think the vegan/vegetarian crowd and the Paleo crowd are both subclasses of SWPL. I think paleo started largely by libertarian minded bloggers but has gained popularity among the SWPLs.

Whatever it is, its not proles who are buying grass fed beef and almond flour and coconut milk. Prole grocery stores don't even sell most of those things.

[Peter A]

"The introduction of gluten/wheat is the main cause of the massive obesity and diabetes rates the developed world is suffering from."

Then why don't Europeans suffer from massive obesity and diabetes at shocking rates? Italian diets are full of bread and pasta, yet Italians do not look like Americans or Italian-Americans. Russian gulag prisoners often lived on a diet of basically just bread for years on end. No obesity there. Processed sugar seems to be a far bigger issue than wheat.

[Tony]

"Obesity rates in Italian children are among the highest in Europe. Around a third of boys and girls are classified as obese by the International Association for the Study of Obesity."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10229869

[Peter A]

But Italians have eaten diets high in carbs for centuries, so a sudden rise in obesity must have a different cause, again probably sweets, sedentary lifestyle and simple overindulgence.

[HS: Sugar is very dense in calories, so eating a lot of sweet stuff is obviously going to make you fat. Sugar is also very sneaky because it can be dissolved in water. Prior to the mass production of soda and fruit punches, people probably drank mostly zero-calorie water.]

[helene edwards]

... irrational hatred of SWPLs, when in reality almost all of the good things about America have come from them. Tell me, honestly, how many of you would willingly move away from Boston or San Fran or New York in order to live in Wyoming or Kansas?

This is a candidate for the dumbest sentiment ever expressed on the web. Are you claiming the boomers delivered SF's climate and hills?

[Tanizaki]

[Prior to the mass production of soda and fruit punches, people probably drank mostly zero-calorie water.]

Due to the iffy quality of water supplies, they drank a lot of beer.

[GK]

The gluten free stuff is made from rice and soy and stuff like that, not from sucking the protein out of wheat. And you can eat meat if you don't eat gluten-- it's not like you're vegetarian. So although I agree that people often think things are wrong with them and take drastic measures to combat these imaginary maladies, your argument that not eating gluten leads to a protein-bereft diet is deeply flawed.