Healthcare Triage: You Probably Don’t Need to Be on that Gluten-free Diet

I wasn’t getting enough hate mail about organic food and GMOs, so let’s up the ante:

This is another one of those videos that I expect many of you to hate. Gluten is surprisingly polarizing. Of course, most of the evidence that many of you will throw at me are anecdotes. And we all know that the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”. So let’s talk about gluten, and whether a gluten-free diet is for you. “Spoiler” – for the vast majority of you, the answer is “no”.

For those of you who came here looking for references, here are some:

• Gluten-free diet: What’s allowed, what’s not
• What is gluten?
• Spectrum of gluten-related disorders: consensus on new nomenclature and classification
• Celiac disease
• The prevalence of celiac disease in the United States
• Physician Awareness of Celiac Disease
• Yield of Diagnostic Tests for Celiac Disease in Individuals With Symptoms Suggestive of Irritable Bowel Syndrome
• A prospective study of the prevalence of undiagnosed coeliac disease in laboratory defined iron and folate deficiency
• Celiac Disease Presenting as Autism
• Prevalence of common food allergies in Europe: a systematic review and meta-analysis
• Food allergy in Asia: how does it compare?
• The natural history of wheat allergy
• Gluten causes gastrointestinal symptoms in subjects without celiac disease: a double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial
• No effects of gluten in patients with self-reported non-celiac gluten sensitivity after dietary reduction of fermentable, poorly absorbed, short-chain carbohydrates
• Gluten-free diets gaining in popularity
• The Gluten-Free Craze: Is It Healthy?

@aaronecarroll