I always suspected there was something off about all this gluten-free nonsense. It just makes no sense to me that some people are so quick to jump on these dietary fads for no legitimate reasons. They are happy to force the food industry to adapt at great expense just to pacify those who need a constant spotlight on themselves.
It reminds me of what my ex used to do to me and it drove me nuts. She claimed she was allergic to onions so every time we went out to dinner she made a great show of interrogating the wait staff about any onions used in their food while I hid my head behind the menu.
Fast-food drive-thru’s, those were the worst days, directed to pull forward into no-man’s ‘special order’ lane to wait for her onion- free burger. It was embarrassing, all the drivers with regular orders staring at us as they drove by, and worse, it violated my doctrine of ordering fast-food at a drive thru without any diversion from the menu, no hold this and hold that nonsense. That’s why they call it FAST food you morons!
Then I find out later she wasn’t allergic at all; she just didn’t like onions. It was the attention and drama she craved.
A dietary myth
I used the ex-wife analogy on this post to demonstrate how easy it is to confuse correlation with causation when it comes to diet. Anthony Warner-The Angry Chef is the nutri-bs book author I admire most. He writes in his book about the gluten bs, THE ANGRY CHEF’S GUIDE TO SPOTTING BULLSH*T IN THE WORLD OF FOOD – that a huge myth has been created around gluten and sadly, huge numbers of people are cutting it from their diets in the misguided belief that doing so puts them on a path to better health. Thinking it’s a fun new lifestyle and a great way to mess with waiters’ heads, the drama lovers proudly declare to all at the table that they are gluten-free. If Kourtney Kardashian or any of the other Kardashian clan came out and said gluten is good for you we wouldn’t be able to keep bread in stock!
Gluten is actually only a very small protein among the thousands of chemicals contained in wheat flour. But this one protein is dangerous to the health of about 1 percent of Americans with celiac disease, an autoimmune response that causes gluten to trigger your body to attack your own intestinal walls. People with this disease who must eliminate gluten entirely from their diet find that it’s difficult, time-consuming, socially difficult, requires careful planning and requires professional help.
In other words a serious pain in the glutenous-maximus. Some 6 percent may have non-celiac gluten sensitivity but it is certainly non-life threatening and no reason to go into hysterics for the benefit of all at the table.
IMO this is just another fine example of today’s social climate, ‘the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many.’ One Tweet or post and BAM! the cancel culture pounces.
