This evening I bought a sack of potatoes and a block of Asiago cheese. Both had labels declaring them to be gluten-free. Gee, I hope they're asbestos-free as well.
The potatoes are a bit silly, but the cheese I can understand. Gluten ends up in all kinds of things that you wouldn't expect.
Yeah, but it shouldn't be in cheese. I can't really think of a cheese making step that might include gluten.
But with modern food processing, who knows? http://celiacdisease.about.com/od/GlutenFreeSnacks/f/Is-Cheese-Gluten-Free.htm
I'm gluten intolerant: does that get me a free yellow shower? For my 45th birthday my quack said he had good news and bad news. The bad news was I had coeliac but the good news was I didn't have to eat any gluten. goodbye pizza and beer. Except now even dominos makes gluten free pizza. Huzza. Now for a good gluten free beer. Happily distillation removes any of the protein from hard liquor. Yes, I'm benefitting from the diet fad. sissies.
There actually are some decent gluten free beers: http://glutenfreedietfoods.com/beer_list.html Ive had the Glutener, and thought it was decent.
I have a digestive condition which makes me sensitive to a lot of wheat so I tend to buy gluten free breads and pastas. When I was trying to find out what was upsetting my system I did the whole celiac look up and it's surprising just how careful some people have to be. The reason none of these labels are silly is because many of these products are packed in factories that also pack products that have gluten in and come celiacs are so sensitive to it that even traces of it can have them bunched over in two on the toilet.
We had this discussion a few weeks back in the Red Room. What Chup says about actually Celiac sufferers is true. It is also true for a whole host of other conditions that do not get special labels. These labels are all about the fad, nothing more.
I guess it's my youthful way of typing... I wish the fad extended to carrying gluten free beer in restaurants. Apparently beer drinkers aren't big health fanatics.
Even if the labeling came about because of fad diets, it's still a good thing, not a bad thing and is a good step towards having other factors highlighted on labels. Over here we don't just have gluten and wheat, we also have nut and lactose allergy advice on our labels, and food that also cater for lactose intolerant people. I don't care how it came about, it's still very useful for sufferers, and it also highlights how many ready made foods wheat and gluten appear it that don't really need them as ingredients.
gluten is used as a binder and thickening agent. It's very nice. Most gluten free substitutes taste like dirt with about the same consistency. I eat a lot of corn tortillas. Other foods/drinks it's used for flavor. Malt is a flavoring agent as well as a main ingredient of many of my favorite beverages (as well as barley), and contains gluten. The main ingredient in soy sauce is wheat. Tamari sauce is one of the few righteous substitutes I've come across, but beware of the fake crab in sushi. The labels here have most allergy concerns labelled clearly including lactose, soy, egg, nut etc. The thing is, unless you live in a bubble, prepare all your own food from unprocessed ingredients, you'll get a whiff of allergens regardless. I don't obsess like some people that do it as a diet fad.
WTF is up with this gluten bullshit all of a sudden? I put it in the same category as the peanut allergy. There is something seriously wrong if this many people are getting ill. I'm guessing we never used to hear about these things because, before we knew better, nature simply took care of that particular strain of DNA with gluten or peanut allergies (i.e., you ate peanuts, you died.) If I couldn't eat gluten or peanuts I'd probably just
I discovered by accident the other day that coffee and cumin taste very much like soy sauce if they're mixed together.
I don't disagree that it's a good thing, but there are too many similar issues to address all of them through labeling. Is a fad that inadvertently helps a small number the best way to determine best public health policies? That's the issue I'm trying to get at.
Ad fads like "Orange Juice: A Fat-FreeGluten-Free Food!" don't really hurt anyone. Things like the Atkins Diet do.
I just think the packaging is weird. Like what would you think if, in response to so many kids with deadly peanut allergies, milk started to be labeled peanut-free?
The packaging is weird, but things like that don't bother me. The value of the warning to people for whom these are life-threatening conditions far outweighs the Silliness Factor and, if nothing else, the Silliness Factor is good for a laugh.
There's a salad dressing mix that didn't use to have any gluten ingredients, but now they've subtly reformulated it to have an undetectable amount of soy sauce. I think the plan is to re-introduce the old stuff as gluten-free and charge twice as much (or package half as much and sell it for the same price as the regular stuff).
Now, that would annoy me. Of course right now gluten-free staples like bread and pasta cost about 2-3x the price of the regular stuff, so the consumer loses one way or the other.
Way back in the day I bought some cheap bread that had the disclaimer "does not contain wood products." So then I started thinking what bread does contain wood products, North Korea not withstanding ?
Except prices tend to raise when corporations are trying to snow the misinformed which effects everyone else, even those of us that have a functioning brain. As to the Adkins diet, if one is diabetic (like me...) that is essentially the diet doctors recommend. Meat, veggies, cheese, and sugar-free drinks.
