How to Be a Conscious Eater

neighbor—you don’t even realize how bad you feel. But you

deserve to be the best version of you; going gluten-free can

help you get there. I tried it myself, and I feel amazing.”

In reality, far more of us avoid gluten than need to. About 1 percent

of Americans have celiac disease, which is a serious autoim-

mune disorder. Those people are advised to strictly follow a

gluten-free diet. Another 6 percent or so have non-celiac glu-

ten sensitivity, a milder condition tied to digestive problems

and other symptoms that does not result in a positive test for

celiac disease; observing whether symptoms improve after a

trial elimination of gluten is the main method of diagnosis.

For everyone else, a gluten-free diet is not advised by nutrition

experts. Still, a 2013 report by the NPD Group, a market research

firm, found that as many as one in three Americans were try-

ing to avoid gluten. That’s more Americans than have a gym

membership or can name all three branches of government.

SOME UNINTENDED RISKS AND CONSEQUENCES OF

GOING GLUTEN-FREE WITHOUT MEDICAL NECESSITY:

Risky replacement ingredients. Once the gluten in a processed food

product gets removed, it typically needs to be replaced. And

the junk fillers replacing gluten are usually blood-sugar-

spiking refined flours such as tapioca starch, potato starch, or

rice starch. One large US study found that people on a gluten-

free diet had double the arsenic and mercury levels of those

who ate gluten. The top suspect? Rice. Now, rice is not inher-

ently bad, but again, the dose makes the poison. As we know,

cutting out one thing in the diet almost always means replac-

ing it with something else. Gluten abstainers should consider

whether replacement foods are in fact less hazardous.

Salt and sugar overload. Comparisons of gluten-free foods with

equivalent products that contain gluten show that the former

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