gluten

Gluten-free is going mainstream

The NYT Magazine just did a piece on the growing gluten-free segment of the food market.  A few excerpts.

"Comparing blood samples from the 1950s to the 1990s, Murray found that young people today are nearly five times as likely to have celiac disease, for reasons he and others researchers cannot explain. And it’s on the rise not only in the U.S. but also in other places where the disease was once considered rare, like Mexico and India. “We don’t know where it’s going to end,” Murray says."

On one athlete that we've followed quite a bit here:

"Athletes, in particular, have taken to the diet. Some claim to have more energy when they cut out gluten, a belief that intrigues some experts and riles others. Guandalini dismisses the idea as “totally bogus.” Yet no one can argue with the success of the world’s No. 1 men’s tennis player, Novak Djokovic. Within months of revealing this year that he had a gluten allergy and had altered his diet accordingly, Djokovic posted a remarkable 64-2 record."

But is it just a fad?

"Back at General Mills in Minnesota, however, Dom Alcocer insists that gluten-free is here to stay. What he sees, he told me, is a growing number of Americans who have no choice but to be gluten-free. Earlier this year, ConAgra Mills, a leading flour supplier, published a report characterizing gluten-free specialty products as a $486 million industry. That’s much smaller than the $6.3 billion figure from Spins, but it doesn’t include mass-market items like Chex cereals. What’s more, David Sheluga, the director of consumer insights at ConAgra Mills, found something significant about who’s buying gluten-free specialty products and why. More than 80 percent of the market, he estimated, is being driven by core consumers — people on the diet for medical reasons. In other words, Sheluga says, even if some occasional customers give up on gluten-free products, it will have little impact on sales. “That core,” Sheluga says, “is not going away.”

You can read the full article here.

Team Garmin goes gluten-free for the Tour de France

People are waking up to gluten.  Team Garmin went totally gluten-free for this year's tour.  Because they're celiacs?  No, because gluten causes inflammation.  (Even beer face.)  Here's what Team Garmin had to say about it: [my bolding]

Our special “anti-inflammatory” diet

For years bike racers have lived on pasta as their primary source of carbohydrates. Jonathan Vaughters has often said that he’ll never eat pasta again as long as he lives! At least the over-cooked pasta that is served in most of the race hotels around the world, the exception being the hotels at the Giro.
 
At this year’s Tour de France, we decided to make a change for our riders. Instead of having pasta and bread every night for dinner we asked our chef, Willy, to prepare rice. And we are giving the riders rice cakes and corn cakes instead of bread. Why? I believe that the high amounts of wheat products that are normally consumed by bike racers at the Tour have an inflammatory effect in the body. I believe that most people have either an overt allergy to wheat products (as Julian Dean demonstrates) or at least a sub-symptomatic inflammatory response to wheat products.
 
At the Tour de France, one of the biggest goals is to maintain as low a state of inflammation as possible. The amount of inflammation that the riders bodies accumulate during the day is so high that any little bit of help we can give them, and this includes dietary modifications, is essential.
 
So, our guys are eating very little wheat products (bread, pasta) and also very little red meat (which also has a pro-inflammatory effect on the body). Most of the meals consist of oats (Willy’s porridge in the mornings!), and in the evenings the guys are eating a lot of chicken, turkey and fish.
 
Yes, they’ve had a couple meals of pasta and red meat. We do need to give them a bit of variety, but the rule has been rice, oats, chicken, fish and lots of fresh fruits and vegetables! Even the foods that we give them on the bike are rice based.
 
There’s a bit of insight into what the guys are eating here at the Tour.
 
Well, there you have it folks -- from the mouths of professional athletes.  Wheat is no good.  Well, what about whole wheat?  Yeah, that too.   (I can't take the good without the bad, and this guy thinks red meat has an inflammatory effect too -- I don't know.  Update: See comment by Levi on red meat being mildly anti-inflammatory.)
 
Here's a more important take-away: superstar athletes are still learning what's good for them and bad for them.  They haven't figured it out yet.  Even when it comes to the basics.  WHO WOULD HAVE EVER THOUGHT THAT PASTA WOULD BE CHALLENGED AS A GOOD FUEL?  Doesn't everybody knows that pasta is the ideal food before a long endurance challenge?
 
The conventional wisdom continues to crumble.  A continuing series.
 
(Thanks to my grandmother, a late blooming celiac, for sending me this link.)
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