Are You Really Gluten-Intolerant? Maybe Not

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/05/are_you_really_gluten-sensitive.html

by growlix • 12 years ago

48 51 12 years ago

spindritf• 12 years ago

Carbs just can't catch a break lately. I wonder if we finally pinpointed the problems with modern western diet or will our kids in a few decades see this as another fad, same way we start to view low fat recommendations.

VLM4• 12 years ago

The modern western diet is the fad, if you look at what it is, how long its been around, and what our biologically identical ancestors ate for a huge multiple of time longer than the modern western diet.

tlowrimore• 12 years ago

I'm curious to know what the key differences are between the modern western diet and the diet of our ancestors. Are you primarily speaking to our consumption of processed foods? Also, what was the diet of our ancestors, and how was this information about our ancestral diet ascertained?

gph• 12 years ago

what our biologically identical ancestors ate for a huge multiple of time longer than the modern western diet.

Why is there a belief that our ancestors had a singularly common diet? Humans have lived in all areas of the earth with vastly different diets. Some were high in fat, some were high in protein, some relied on plants/fruit, others were more balanced, etc.

Yes we probably on average have a higher carb intake than most humans in the past. But that doesn't mean there was some standardized diet that all pre-historic humans ate. They ate whatever was around to survive.

chez172• 12 years ago

I love the anti-science bias of people against the gluten-free trend. You're telling me if an article came out that showed a study with a sample size of 37 people found that marijuana was incredibly harmful we would see the same "Marijuana confirmed to be incredibly harmful!" all over the internet? With the same certainty and intensity? Give me a break. There is a lot of nonsense in the gluten-free movement, there is no doubt about it. However I don't understand the hate it generates out of otherwise skeptical and rational people.

zinxq• 12 years ago

It is perpetually surprising to me how much other people feel it's their business what other people choose to eat.

coldpie2• 12 years ago

It is frustrating as someone who prepares food for others to have to deal with bullshit "food intolerances" like the current gluten-free fad. I could prepare a delicious meal for you, but I guess you've decided you're gluten intolerant (unless you've been diagnosed with Celiac by a doctor, you're not), so nevermind. Or the tasteless sorghum beer these types bring to parties.

Food's a social thing. Placing nonsense limitations on what's allowed can really cramp social settings.

VLM4• 12 years ago

If you think most people are open minded about most things, for a good time, ask them about sex and imaginary men in the sky, or which economic system should be implemented, or which governmental system should be implemented, or even what clothing different genders should be required to wear... if most people had their way, you'd have very little ability to make decisions of any kind.

bane3• 12 years ago

Wait until you try and throw an office party for 50+ people and have to accommodate all sorts of self-imposed special snowflake religious fad hypochondriac diets for a few people so they don't feel left out.

Suddenly something as simple as ordering a dozen cheese and a dozen pepperoni pizzas the morning of the party turns into a multi-day consensus finding exercise and after the histrionics, sensitivity meetings with H.R. and shouting subsides you end up with a catered meal provided by a specialty diet catering company that nobody who would have just eaten the pizza will touch, doesn't taste very good and it costs 5 times as much and now thousands of dollars in wasted time is the result.

thenomad• 12 years ago

It looks to be a decently well-designed study, albeit one that didn't have a huge sample size. And the language in the article isn't excessively strong or dismissive, as they often are.

Personally I'm currently not eating gluten and appear to experience adverse reactions to it, but I didn't find this article excessively hostile to me or my eating choices. Indeed, I thought it was rather interesting, and might do a limited trial of non-FODMAP gluten to see what it does to me personally.

chez172• 12 years ago

I'm not commenting on the study, I'm commenting on the reaction to the study. The reaction would be much more tame and reserved if it were on a subject that people didn't love to hate. The authors of the study and the study itself are not addressed in my comment.

kolev2• 12 years ago

Well, marijuana is harmful anyway.

baldfat3• 12 years ago

Marijuana is no more harmful then alcohol!!!!

Alcohol is evil BUT that science is always ignored.

World Health Organization 1 in 5 deaths is alcohol related. 20% of the worlds deaths are related to alcohol consumption and well we don't care. SCIENCE

chimeracoder2• 12 years ago

I don't see a hostile tone either in the linked article or in the comments so far. What is this in response to?

Reading through the study, it seems that there is an overlap between the foods proscribed by a gluten-free diet and the foods proscribed by a FODMAP-free diet. So it's really not even criticizing the diet; it's suggesting a more precise explanation for people who believe they are gluten-intolerant[0] (along with some other foods to consider avoiding as well).

EDIT The same website does have a more recent article on the topic with a much more sensational headline: http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/05/gluten_sensitiv... .

[0] Even among people who are gluten-intolerant/gluten-insensitive, there is an awareness that "all gluten" may not be bad - it's just easier to avoid all gluten than to go through the effort of identify the specific compounds that trigger their symptoms by trial-and-error.

hyperpape2• 12 years ago

I could accuse you of "anti-science bias" for dismissing a study because it only has 37 people. Because while I am not a statistician (and I'm not even looking at the details of this study), I know that they evaluate studies on something more concrete than "37 sounds small".

Just by coincidence I ran across a very nice comment yesterday making this point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7055194.

mendicantB• 12 years ago

In the same aggressive tone you're holding towards the article, you probably should have read the publication before criticizing the experiment.

Quick lesson on pharmaceutical studies: they are extremely expensive and often can only have a limited sample size.

Quick lesson on statistics: it was developed to deal with small sample sizes and allow you to generalize to larger populations.

As such, pharmacy has very strict statistical standards with how to setup, design, and analyze experimental results. I'm a statistician, and I was impressed by how well designed this experiment was.

More so, the study only aimed to find a more precise cause of the issues. And, even with the solid analysis they had, are simply saying, "Hey, we should question this anti-gluten thing, it might not be as big an issue as we think".

Raise more questions, that's good science.

chris_mahan3• 12 years ago

I went gluten-free 2 years ago and all my symptoms went away, I feel better, have lots of energy, etc.

I did not take a test, but my (non-alternative) internal medicine doctor told me to go on the gluten free-diet after I explained (in gory details) my symptoms.

Is the test really necessary then? Really?

squidfood• 12 years ago

Maybe not to you, but from a public health perspective it is important to understand what's going on.

Also: if you learned that gluten in general could be on the menu again, but that you should avoid gluten products that also contain chemical X, wouldn't it make your life (or the life of people cooking for you) a bit easier?

chris_mahan3• 12 years ago

Perhaps, but it's another test I have to pay for, so.

(health insurance may pay some, but I'll still have a bill in 3 months staring at me asking for money.)

galvanist2• 12 years ago

On your gluten free diet, do you eat (in no particular order): apples, pears, peaches, milk, sugar, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, garlic, avocado, cauliflower, mushrooms, and soft / fresh cheeses?

Do you have any issues with them? They are identified as high FODMAP foods.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1440-1746.2009....

chris_mahan3• 12 years ago

I do, and I have no issue with them. I eat lots of apples, sugar, broccoli, mushroom, and cheese. Daily. I eat goat yogurt (I like the taste better) but I eat some regular yogurt too. I typically don't drink milk (taste again) and eat almond and coconut milk instead. (Trader Joe's gets lots of my business)

I eat very few processed food, canned food.

I eat all fruit (except kiwi--i get irritable bumps on my tongue), meats, cheeses, vegetables, rice, potatoes, dairy products, wine, and non-beer, non whiskey alcohol. (Also, some Shoju is made from wheat, so I only drink those from sugar cane, potato, sweet potato, etc).

I eat very little fried foods. (Although I won't pass up french fries on occasion).

jamesgeck02• 12 years ago

I self-diagnosed after having stomachaches for a month and a half. I cut various foods out of my diet, and when I stopped eating bread things got much better.

But I've thought that I've been missing a variable for a while. Wheat-based pancakes trigger pain, but I've also very occasionally had pain after eating things that didn't contain gluten at all. A few times I've accidentally eaten things that should have contained a fair amount of gluten, but they didn't set me off.

My problem experimenting with an exclusion diet is that my pain is quick to show up, but slow to leave. It took two weeks after I cut gluten for my stomach to finally settle. The effects of subsequent accidental dosages of gluten took a week to wear off.

krisdol• 12 years ago

More often than not, it's actually an ulcer rather than gluten intolerance.

hyperpape2• 12 years ago

I slowly realized in college that I was lactose intolerant. The symptoms are quite obvious, but I had always drank milk and eaten ice cream, and halfway thought that I just would always have stomach problems. Doctors can test you for it, but the ones I've spoken with have always said "it sounds like a pretty clear cut case" and never suggested the test.

I roll my eyes at the sheer quantity of people avoiding gluten, but if your symptoms are really overt[1] and the difference was that quick, I'm not going to question you.

I'm bothered by people who are 80-20 gluten free or can't point to any concrete issues, because I suspect they are attaching themselves to a fad. And I'm bothered by people with serious symptoms being diagnosed by chiropractors. I think that level of random speculation is often not just pointless, but potentially harmful.

[1] You didn't say what they are, beyond energy, but I'm trusting your judgment here.

rdtsc2• 12 years ago

The ingestion of gluten, a protein found in grains like wheat, rye, and barley, gives rise to antibodies that attack the small intestine.

Is this something new? Growing up in a different country I don't remember _ever_ hearing about this. And here is a huge "Gluten free X" market, where X is just about everything.

Does this sound odd or strange? Isn't gluten something people have been eating for a very long time now? And now we've evolved this strange sensitivity to it. So the idea is that it is these FODMAPs. Do we today end up eating more products with FODMAPs while before when baking bread it just didn't have that many of those?

I feel the same is happening with allergies. I don't remember hearing much about allergies. I only knew one kid in my high-school who had asthma. But now I know a lot of people in this country that are allergic to all kind of things. Heck my wife is. I have become allergic to pollen in the spring (and it never bothered me as a kid).

Anyway, it just seems very puzzling.

d23• 12 years ago

I've been having terrible stomach issues for about a year now. I went to a nutritionist who suggested a FODMAP elimination phase to try to identify the problem. Nothing seemed to help. I don't really know what to do now.

baldfat3• 12 years ago

Go to someone who is not a nutritionist :)

rdtsc2• 12 years ago

I am sorry to hear that. That sounds very frustrating.

Maybe try a different doctor. Maybe keep a diary of what you eat. See if there is something in particular the make it worse.

We had to do it for our kid to see if they are allergic to certain foods (since my wife is).

bake2• 12 years ago

While gluten itself may or may not produce any ill effects for non-celiacs (likely not, it seems), it may regardless be a helpful signal of which foods to avoid for other reasons. Even if only adhered to leniently, a bias against gluten has been a great help in reducing the quantity of processed food I consume, the benefit of which I don’t think anyone currently denies.

coldpie2• 12 years ago

Indeed. I wish those who embrace this fad would come to the realization that the health benefits come from avoiding huge carb-loads like donuts, bagels, etc. The benefits don't come from avoiding gluten.

nathanm412• 12 years ago

Yes, but you could certainly make an attempt to reduce processed foods instead of indirectly by avoiding gluten. There is plenty of processed food out there that doesn't rely on wheat, and the gluten free section of the grocery store is starting to look more and more processed every day.

bake2• 12 years ago

Absolutely -- you're spot on.

tzs• 12 years ago

Regardless of whether or not gluten-intolerance is as widespread as some claim it is, I'd like to see a simple change to food labeling to make it easier for those who want to know what they are eating to find out: versioning on labels.

The way it works now, I go to the supermarket. I see, say, a frozen spaghetti and meatball entree. I carefully read the long label to see if it has anything that makes me want to avoid it [1]. It passes. I buy it. I like it. Can I now just buy it again, without reading the label?

Nope! Food companies like to tinker with their products to improve consumer satisfaction and to cut their costs and increase their profits, so I need to read the label again.

If they put version information, such as a last change date, on the ingredient list I could then just glance at the date and see if it has changed since I last bought the item.

This should be doable at almost zero cost to the food producers if it is phased in by making the switch to versioning on a given product the next time they are changing the label.

[1] I have no known foods that I must avoid for medical reasons, but I have some admittedly irrational requirements. Some time when I was a kid, I decided for some reason to stop eating meats other than beef and pork. I have sometimes described myself as a lacto-ovo-bovo-porco vegetarian.

growlix• 12 years ago

FWIW, I submitted this article with the title "Gluten intolerance is likely FODMAP intolerance" because I wanted to avoid the condescending, linkbait title of the original article.

allannienhuis• 12 years ago

Shameless plug for my iPhone/ios app: http://isthatglutenfree.com

The marketing website is way out of date, but the app is current, regularly updated (dedicated staff) and has the largest database of gluten-free brands and products available. The next release (out as soon as I can get it past the Apple gatekeepers) adds the ability to easily find NEW brands/products.

If you've chosen to eat gluten-free you know that finding tasty gluten-free products can be a real challenge. I'm trying to help people that have already made the decision to eat gluten-free; I'm not trying to 'promote' the diet itself - any significant diet and health decisions really should be made in consultation with professionals.

Would love to feel some HN love for my app :)

Are You Really Gluten-Intolerant? Maybe Not

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