Could gluten-free become the norm?

[AY1975]

Given that a small but growing minority of the UK's (and probably the world's) population are finding out that they are coeliac or gluten intolerant, and that some parents swear by bringing up their children on a largely or fully gluten-free diet whether they need to or not (and even some adults think it's better for you even if you're not coeliac or gluten intolerant), do you think gluten-free food (and drinks in terms of drinks that normally contain gluten, such as beer) could eventually become the norm?

 

[JamesT]

Given that a small but growing minority of the UK's (and probably the world's) population are finding out that they are coeliac or gluten intolerant, and that some parents swear by bringing up their children on a largely or fully gluten-free diet whether they need to or not (and even some adults think it's better for you even if you're not coeliac or gluten intolerant), do you think gluten-free food (and drinks in terms of drinks that normally contain gluten, such as beer) could eventually become the norm?

I think it's unlikely. Although costs have come down, it's still more expensive to make alternatives to the normal gluten-containing products.
There's also been a growing backlash against 'ultraprocessed' foods. Although that tends to be more a vegan thing, some of these foods that are sold as being 'healthier' are really not as they contain so many additives to make them taste as good as what they replace.

 

[jfollows]

I avoid anything promoted as "gluten free" because it's not an issue for me, and I believe that it's a way of charging more for the same thing. The problem is that some things don't have gluten in them anyway, and are marketed as "gluten free" which I find to be a con. However I don't dispute in any way that some things which normally contain gluten can be made without and which are a necessity for those who can't tolerate it. It's just that the marketing spin sometimes takes over.

 

[DerekC]

There was a programme (I think on Channel 4) a year or more ago which looked at the whole gluten-free thing and suggested that unless you have a diagnosed intolerance (or coeliac disease) you are wasting your money. There is also the point that wheat, which must supply quite a large chunk of the worlds nutritional needs, is relatively easy to grow and doesn't need extensive processing. People going unnecessarily for a gluten-free alternative probably increases the environmental impact of our food.

 

[AY1975]

There was a programme (I think on Channel 4) a year or more ago which looked at the whole gluten-free thing and suggested that unless you have a diagnosed intolerance (or coeliac disease) you are wasting your money. There is also the point that wheat, which must supply quite a large chunk of the worlds nutritional needs, is relatively easy to grow and doesn't need extensive processing. People going unnecessarily for a gluten-free alternative probably increases the environmental impact of our food.

I think you might be thinking of Food Unwrapped (Series 17 Episode 12 according to the Channel 4 website).

 

[jon81uk]

No. Bread and sandwiches as well as other pastry products are too large a part of our lunchtime culture.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

...do you think gluten-free food (and drinks in terms of drinks that normally contain gluten, such as beer) could eventually become the norm?

Would it be fair to say, for the vast majority of folk who can tolerate gluten in food products, that those items which are labelled "gluten free", quite often just don't taste the same?

If so, there must be a reason for this!

 

[Narrowgauge725]

With a wife and daughter who are bot gluten intolerant all I can say it is a very big pain trying to eat out particularly when you just want a sandwich. Gluten free products are more expensive even though some products are naturally gluten free. We bought a product without gluten yesterday which wasn't marked as gluten free but contained no wheat products as was normal price. Most gluten free marked products are not worth buying. Wife had a gluten free bacon sandwich at a particular cafe on a farm currently featured on TV where the chef like to take challenges last night was bread, the gluten free bread just fell apart, my feedback was their chef needs to take some lessons from the cafe down the road who do excellent gluten free bacon butties

 

[Elwyn]

There is a fair bit of scientific research that says gluten is an essential part of a balanced diet and has health benefits. Avoiding gluten can lead to increased risks of heart disease. So unless you happen to be gluten intolerant, some gluten in your diet is probably good for you.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/gluten/

 

[Mikw]

Gluten free food gives me the trots

 

[Crossover]

My girlfriend is coeliac so GF is an essential part of life for us - I eat gluten stuff generally but when we are having meals at home together we will often do GF

The biggest problem is that we also have to be very careful over cross contamination as well (due to the seriousness of coeliac) and eating out can be a challenge. What doesn’t really help matters is the GF ‘fad’ diets leading some to believe all GF people are doing it by choice (and where cross contamination is not such a big issue)

There are plenty of GF things out there but you have to look out for them and the same product can change regularly as to if it’s suitable. The Free From section is a place not to spend too much time - we visit it for bread and cereal, but that’s about all, regularly.

Baked goods are one of the bigger disappointments with GF as gluten is such a staple of the regular thing. Other things are less of an issue though. Obviously, naturally GF products is the ideal

EDIT: to add, one thing that could do with addressing is products which could be GF but contain stupid amounts of gluten. Some ready meals such as cottage pies with a hint of barley or wheat flour as a thickener (some supermarkets have ones which are suitable, why can’t they all?!)

 

[Peter Sarf]

I avoid anything promoted as "gluten free" because it's not an issue for me, and I believe that it's a way of charging more for the same thing. The problem is that some things don't have gluten in them anyway, and are marketed as "gluten free" which I find to be a con. However I don't dispute in any way that some things which normally contain gluten can be made without and which are a necessity for those who can't tolerate it. It's just that the marketing spin sometimes takes over.

I have the same attitude to "Organic" it is mainly bought to be fashionable and costs more. Some things that are labelled as Organic I have been lead to believe have equivalents that are not labelled as Organic but are just as Organic.

My mother was Lactose intolerant and I have been out with her for a meal when the staff assure her a meal is Lactose free. I am at pains to point out that I know even slight contamination is a problem so to double check with the kitchen. Needless to say on more than one occasion the meal was cut short with a failed rush to the loo followed by a drive home with a bin bag on the car seat. When I could avoid her knowing I would avoid paying.

Would it be fair to say, for the vast majority of folk who can tolerate gluten in food products, that those items which are labelled "gluten free", quite often just don't taste the same?

If so, there must be a reason for this!

I have encountered gluten free foods and have to say they are amazingly bland. It makes me wonder if we have got used to some kind of flavour enhancer that does not fit gluten free. It is like people who complain about a poor restaurant meal but if you dig then you find they use a lot of salt in their home cooking. I never used to add salt to anything I cooked, in fact so little that when encountering my mothers cooking I sometimes found the level of salt quite overpowering. So perhaps it is what we have got used to.

One place I worked at back in about 1995 started using "Lo-Salt" in the canteen food - gosh they made it taste so salty a few of us started to eat elsewhere !.

I feel sorry for anyone who has a genuine allergy.

 

[GusB]

It's shocking that catering establishments don't take allergies seriously. For some people it may just be a fad, but for others it could literally be the difference between life and death. I had a friend who turned out to be lactose intolerant and when she cut dairy out from her diet, her lifestyle was immensely improved. We shouldn't be joking about this.

My dad was diagnosed as coeliac a couple of years before he passed away and at first it was a complete and utter nightmare. Common allergens are bolded in the ingredients lists on all products these days, but I didn't actually realise the extent of the issue until I had to take him to the supermarket. Obviously stuff like bread is going to contain gluten, but we had to examine everything before putting anything in the shopping trolley. Take something simple like a tin of soup, for example - the only variety that was guaranteed to be gluten free (at the time) was tomato; everything else seemed to contain wheat in some form when there really wasn't any need for it.

 

[davews]

Our church insists on gluten free bread for our communion services. It tastes yuk.

 

[nlogax]

Having once lived with a medically diagnosed coeliac I've had more than my fair share of gluten-free foods. It's a big ol' nope from me.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

I do wonder how many people who think they're gluten intolerant actually are. I'm not casting aspersions on those who actually have coeliac disease, but more those who developed a rash, googled it, and saw that gluten intolerance came up.
For example a few years ago I developed a very itchy rash shortly after returning from Barcelona. Initially I didn't make a connection between the itch and the trip, but googled the symptoms and gluten intolerance was the first thing that came up. I was fairly certain this wasn't the case, and once I spoke to a pharmacist he confirmed this. Turned out I'd picked up a case of scabies from either the bedsheets in Barcelona or from the couchettes of the French sleeper train!

There's also the fact that so many "healthy" brands of food advertise themselves as "gluten free" as if that's a good thing regardless of having an intolerance. This means some will think gluten=bad, even though this isn't the case.

 

[jfollows]

I do wonder how many people who think they're gluten intolerant actually are.

Like you, I have nothing but sympathy for people who are, but I'm sure that we now have perfect conditions of, firstly, the relative inability to get an appointment to see a doctor and, secondly, the widespread use of social media coupled with uncritical belief in which it says which leads to a lot of self-diagnosis. We probably all know someone "since I stopped taking X, I feel a lot better, so I have Y". "Good for you", I generally think, but it's what I said earlier on really - people think they're gluten intolerant and fall for the marking con tricks into buying more expensive and more profitable "gluten free" products. Even when the products never have gluten in them in the first place!
I think it comes from a mind-set of "something must be wrong with me" which often isn't justified.
Then I note that every body is different, and responds differently to stimuli - food or medicine. Some doctors have a "one treatment fits all" attitude which is just wrong. Even on a daily regimen of pills, like I am, it's necessary to fine-tune the treatment to one which works for me. I'm lucky that I've done this ten or more years ago and now have a regular and trouble-free treatment set.
But people are free to self-diagnose, that's human nature, and if they feel better for it even if it's not real, that's not really a problem. My dislike is for the companies that market for these people and take advantage of them.

 

[SynthD]

Peanut allergies are far more accepted by the public, yet we have very few peanut free places. Schools often entirely ban peanuts, in the last decade. As gluten, or only wheat for some people, are an issue when eaten, they don’t need to be banned around vulnerable people.

 

[AY1975]

Our church insists on gluten free bread for our communion services. It tastes yuk.

So did my church for a number of years pre-Covid as part of our inclusive ethos. Personally I thought it tasted OK, and I'm not aware of anyone there who objected to them using it for everyone although that's not to say there wasn't anyone who disliked it. In fact I think a lot of our congregation thought it was a good idea from an inclusivity point of view.

Using gluten-free bread for everyone obviously saves having to keep a separate supply of gluten-free wafers/hosts for people who need them (and risking running out of them so that some gluten-intolerant worshippers have to receive a blessing instead).

Since we resumed holding services in person after the lockdown, though, my church has reverted to using normal communion wafers and consecrated a small number of gluten-free wafers (which are kept in a separate container) for people who need them.

When we first resumed meeting for worship in person, we could only offer communion in one kind. My church's current practice is for the celebrant or Eucharistic minister to dip each wafer in the wine and then give it to the communicant, and it's not advisable to do that with normal bread or gluten-free bread. I suppose that policy could be reviewed sooner or later, though.

I know that's getting slightly off-topic, though. See also this now locked thread from 2021 on attending places of worship post-lockdown, particularly from my comments in entry #43 of that thread onwards: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/attending-places-of-worship-post-restrictions.219744/

 

[Narrowgauge725]

I do wonder how many people who think they're gluten intolerant actually are. I'm not casting aspersions on those who actually have coeliac disease, but more those who developed a rash, googled it, and saw that gluten intolerance came up.
For example a few years ago I developed a very itchy rash shortly after returning from Barcelona. Initially I didn't make a connection between the itch and the trip, but googled the symptoms and gluten intolerance was the first thing that came up. I was fairly certain this wasn't the case, and once I spoke to a pharmacist he confirmed this. Turned out I'd picked up a case of scabies from either the bedsheets in Barcelona or from the couchettes of the French sleeper train!

There's also the fact that so many "healthy" brands of food advertise themselves as "gluten free" as if that's a good thing regardless of having an intolerance. This means some will think gluten=bad, even though this isn't the case.

Well if you had gluten intolerance you would know about it. It is not a fad at least not for those who suffer with it. Crap bread and expensive foods are things you wouldn’t eat for the sake of it. When I tuck into a lovely slice of sourdough bread both my wife and daughter drool over it. If they ate they would both be fighting for the loo the day after.

 

[AY1975]

Well if you had gluten intolerance you would know about it.

Yes, usually, although I think you can be coeliac or gluten intolerant without showing any symptoms (or at least without any obvious symptoms), or you might have very mild symptoms that you may think are caused by something else.

I believe that some people who are coeliac or gluten intolerant only find out that they have it when they need to have a blood test for something else, and that test might reveal that they have it.

Also, I believe that whenever someone is diagnosed as coeliac or gluten intolerant, they normally test all of that person's immediate family (parents, children, siblings) as a matter of course.

 

[Crossover]

Take something simple like a tin of soup, for example - the only variety that was guaranteed to be gluten free (at the time) was tomato; everything else seemed to contain wheat in some form when there really wasn't any need for it.

This, this and this! It appears in the most ludicrous of places

There's also the fact that so many "healthy" brands of food advertise themselves as "gluten free" as if that's a good thing regardless of having an intolerance. This means some will think gluten=bad, even though this isn't the case.

marking con tricks into buying more expensive and more profitable "gluten free" products. Even when the products never have gluten in them in the first place!

Those markings do make life for some of us a hell of a lot easier (and would be easier if not so inconsistent) as it saves trawling through ingredients lists

The problem is that in many places the GF gets hauled in with vegan etc and you end up with a ‘one size fits all’

As I said before though, the faddy GFers do nothing for the reputation of those who have no choice (specifically with coeliacs who are damaging their body if the ingest gluten)

 

[EmilyJEG]

I am the coeliac mentioned by Crossover - I found out during lockdown... as if life back then wasn't difficult enough lol. It was miserable at first, but I've got used to having to double and triple check everything.

"Gluten free" is a protected term, so I'm always grateful to companies that go to the effort of declaring their food is suitable. I'm thinking of things like crisps - many brands are unsuitable for coeliacs as they are 'may contains'. It's also a nice surprise when you discover something is gluten free that you'd be sure wasn't - like KitKat Festive Friends, which have the logo on the front. However, it also winds me up when restaurants describe some of their dishes as 'gluten free' and then tell me it's unsuitable due to the risk of cross-contamination, because that's a misuse of the term. Or like at Everyman Cinema, who went overboard with the bottom-covering on their allergen menu and listed literally everything as being a 'may contain' - a disclaimer about the kitchen handling various allergens is more helpful than a check in every single box of the matrix. Things like this not only mean people with allergies often aren't catered for, but also make the company look stupid, quite frankly.

I don't think everything will become gluten free because it'd just be too expensive and it's not a worthwhile endeavour. I do hope, however, that more things become gluten free in the future - things that are 'ruined' by the smallest quantities of an ingredient: the biggest culprit, in my opinion, being barley malt extract. In small quantities it's actually classed as gluten free but many companies won't pay for the tests to label it as such (it has to be less than 20ppm, although many countries are far stricter with a cut-off of 5ppm).

 

[westv]

Our church insists on gluten free bread for our communion services. It tastes yuk.

I bet I'm not the only person that has been in a rush when buying sandwiches from a supermarket and mistakenly bought gluten free ones and had to throw most if it away due to the taste.

 

[zero]

My wife hates the taste of gluten-free food but I don't have a problem. I will often buy it when it's yellow-stickered to a price I would pay for the normal version of the product - but I have to eat all of it as my wife won't.

 

[Peter Sarf]

My wife hates the taste of gluten-free food but I don't have a problem. I will often buy it when it's yellow-stickered to a price I would pay for the normal version of the product - but I have to eat all of it as my wife won't.

Nah. Burnt my fingers there. Won't touch Gluten Free again even if reduced by 75% or even 90%.