Gluten-Free Diet Awareness Month on November, 2024: Free Diet Awareness Month - Is it just me, or is the new trend to be gluten free?

November, 2024 is Gluten-Free Diet Awareness Month 2024. National Gluten-free Diet Awareness Month A gluten-free diet

This is Celiac Awareness month. Elizabeth Hasselbeck has just brought a book (I'm told full of inaccuracies, but that's by the by) about it, and Starbucks has just brought out a new gluten free cake.

Yes, currently gluten free and celiac are buzzwords. And it won't last, I'm sure. But all these new gluten free options that have come on the market are unlikely to disappear so quickly, which is a good thing for those of us that have been gluten free before and will continue to be afterwards.

Some people think going gluten free will help them lose weight or detox - Oprah started a detox which was gluten free (amongst other things) a while back, but it was going before that. A gluten free diet may cause you to lose weight, or gain, or may have no effect at all. It really depends more on what you eat, than on the fact that you've cut out gluten - although if you're suffering from celiac disease and you go gluten free, you will most likely gain weight, because you will be able to absorb the nutrients in your food.

Going gluten free is an excellent way of diagnosing gluten intolerance. If you have unexplained symptoms (there is a wide range of different symptoms from mental and emotional difficulties to arthritis, skin diseases and digestive problems) try the diet for 3 weeks, then do 1 or 2 days as a challenge - where you eat gluten at every meal. This will show you right away if you are gluten intolerant or not.

There's no benefit to a gluten free diet if you aren't gluten intolerant or celiac - but as the average time for diagnosis for adults WITH SYMPTOMS in the US is 11 years, you may well be so without realizing it.

are there benefits to eating a gluten-free diet even if you arent gluten intolerant?

According to some coeliac specialist researchers, everyone has some reaction to gluten, but non-coeliacs recover quickly. Many people report feeling better on a gluten free diet. It's worth consulting a physician & dietician before you start though, as there are some important things you'll need to consider.

The gluten free diet has become a fad, and for many it's completely unnecessary. But it ISN'T bad for you if you're not gluten intolerant. How can it be? It isn't bad for coeliacs, and we're the ones with the malabsorption problems.

All it means is eating fresh fruit, dairy, meat, poultry, fish, vegetables and non gluten grains. How can that be unhealthy? It's true you have to be more careful with high glycaemic loads and fats - but you'd be doing that anyway. Rice, sweet potato, pulses and so on should give you plenty of the right kind of carb & fibre.

The good thing for you, if you do decide to use the GF diet, is that small amounts of contamination won't set your health back months or years, and you'll be able to tolerate the hidden sources quite ok.

The strict GF diet isn't always easy, but it's not as bad as a lot of people think, especially if you like cooking and don't mind preparing your food from fresh ingredients. But if you rely on fast food and supermarket meals you'll be very limited.

I don't mind non-coeliacs going GF, because it increases the awareness of GF food. But please be aware that restaurants and hospitals who have to go out of their way to cater for people they think are just following fashion sometimes don't take genuine coeliacs seriously. That can harm our health big time, if they think 'a little won't hurt' (it does) or 'yeah, I've seen you guys eat gluten and you don't die' (not in front of you, not today...)

I want to create a National Go Gluten-Free Week....?

although I agree that gluten free is a good lifestyle choice, its still that, a lifestyle choice, at least for those without celiac. therefore you would have a major uphill climb trying to get any official recognition. it would open the floodgates for vegan week, vegetarian week, casein free week, organic week, citrus diet week, etc.

tiggsy,

you are incorrect, as long as nutrient values are maintained, gluten free diets are fine. throughout the course of human evolution, we have only been eating vegetation for approximately .09% of our development. therefore, our bodies are not necessarily designed to efficiently process many plant based nutrients. for example, soy is an extremely inefficiently metabolized protein source. our bodies can easily metabolize and utilize animal, whey and casein proteins. there is nothing wrong with a gluten free diet.