Okay if you are a diagnosed Celiac or had been diagnosed with a serious wheat allergy, ignore the following because I am sure you’ve learned a healthy and affordable get-around to the following disadvantages of eating a mostly gluten-free diet. But for the many of us who have been kind of led to believe that the gluten-free label makes a food better/healthier, you might want to think again:
- You won’t lose weight! There is no evidence that a gluten-free diet will shed pounds or shrink your waistline. When anyone reports that they lost a ton of weight after going gluten-free, it’s probably because they have reduced the amount of carbs they eat, especially bread, pasta, cakes and cookies. That being said, with so many new gluten-free pastas, breads and baked goods on the market now, you might even gain weight by going on a gluten-free diet because many of these products are full of starchy flours and sugar.
- Costs More: Go check out the cost of products in the gluten-free section of the grocery store – they are often way more expensive than their gluten-filled counterparts.
- You might be missing something: The supposed symptoms of gluten-intolerance could be something other than gluten intolerance. I know people who have given up gluten, felt a bit better, and then symptoms return. They then wind up trying to give up other foods until they’re eating practically nothing and thus malnourished. This is why it’s important to get a proper diagnosis by way of blood work and/or biopsy if you think that you might be gluten-intolerant. If you are not, it might be that you have IBS or another digestive issue, which might need to be treated in an entirely different way.
I think the key is moderation. If you are not diagnosed with a serious intolerance, you may be able to enjoy a few really healthy whole grains in the form of cereal, pasta, Artisan breads, and many more delicious foods. We are just accustomed to eating SO much wheat with our SAD (Standard American Diet) way of eating: Bread, waffles, muffins etc for breakfast, bread with lunch and huge bread baskets served before a full meal in virtually every restaurant across America. Although Britain is catching up, they tend to eat less wheat in Europe. I recently visited Paris and at first felt there was something missing when we weren’t delivered a huge bread basket after sitting down to dinner. Then I realized how enjoyable the rest of the meal was because we didn’t feel stuffed, and certainly didn’t need doggy bags to cart home uneaten food – in the absence of all that bread, we cleaned our plates.
