Gluten-Free

Gluten-free Djokovic wins Australian Open (again)

This was one of the most epic matches in tennis history.

MELBOURNE, Australia -- Novak Djokovic ripped off his shirt and let out a primal scream, flexing his torso the way a prize fighter would after a desperate, last-round knockout.

This was the final act in Djokovic's 5-7, 6-4, 6-2, 6-7 (5), 7-5 victory over Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open final -- a sweat-drenched, sneaker-squeaking 5 hour, 53-minute endurance contest that ended at 1:37 a.m. Monday morning in Melbourne.

Djokovic overcame a break in the fifth set to win his fifth Grand Slam tournament and third in a row. None, though, quite like this.

This one involved tears, sweat and, yes, even a little blood. It was the longest Grand Slam singles final in the history of pro tennis and it came against Nadal, the player who built a career on his tenacity -- on outlasting opponents in matches like these.

Conditioning matters. Here's the article.

Here's a five-minute recap of the match.

Gluten-free communion wafers

From a fascinating article on the market for communion wafers:

Prior to her vocation, Sister Lynn earned a bachelor’s degree in biomedical science, and, on coming to Clyde in 2001, she found her skills in high demand at the altar bread facility—which is not, as Dan Cavanagh said of some convents, “a couple of plates and a lot of volunteers.”

The Catholic Church requires that hosts be made of wheat in order for communion to be valid, but there is a small number of Catholics who suffer from coeliac disease, a hereditary autoimmune disorder that makes it impossible to digest the protein found in wheat gluten. In the 1980s, people with coeliac disease began to agitate within the Church for alternatives to the wheaten Eucharist, that they might participate more fully in Catholic services; but the Church remained intransigent on the point.

A decade later, a group of sisters at the Clyde monastery began a series of unsuccessful experiments with spelt-flour wafers; they were unable to make a host that people with coeliac disease could safely eat and which would be acceptable to the Church. As the years went by, the experiments continued, and the monastery eventually contacted the USDA in order to get more information about gluten and the way flour is processed. Still, the Sisters obtained only mixed results. When Sister Lynn arrived in 2001, she immediately stepped in:

"I have a science background, so I was interested from a scientific perspective and started helping out. We eventually made a bread that worked with .01% gluten content [as compared to the 12-14% in normal communion wafers]… The Church said that was aceeptable to them, so we gave the breads to people with coeliac’s [sic] disease and they had no reactions whatsoever.

The low-gluten wafers offered by the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration continue to be the only Church-sanctioned alternative for people with coeliac disease. Sister Lynn estimates that half of their customers purchase low-gluten wafers for individual congregants, and many choose to order the rest of their breads from the same source for convenience’s sake.

The rest of the article is interesting too. Link from Paul Hsieh via Tyler Cowen.

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.

Gluten-free Novak Djokovic wins U.S. Open, caps off stunning season

Well, it looks like I backed the right horse in Novak Djokovic. The Djoker just won the U.S. Open in commanding fashion, dispatching Rafael Nadal for the sixth straight time. He is close to finishing a tremendous season, winning three of the four Grand Slams, going 64-2, while making top competitors like Nadal look like a ball boy playing with a wooden racket. (Okay, not all the time -- he came back from two sets down and two match points against Federer.)

Why so dominant?

"Djokovic attributes his rise this season to a number of factors, including a vastly improved serve, better fitness -- owing, at least in part, to a gluten-free diet he doesn't like to discuss in any detail -- and a seemingly endless reservoir of confidence that dates to December, when he led Serbia to its first Davis Cup title."

Wonder why he doesn't discuss it any detail? Probably because he considers it a strategic advantage.

When I first posted about Djokovic back in May, at the start of the French Open, it seemed like I had hyped him too much. He lost to Federer in the semis. But he's lived up to the hype. Just remember, you heard it here first.

You can subscribe to my sports betting newsletter, Live Wild, at right.

Djokovic wore an FDNY hat after his victory

Quote of the day

On Djokovic's Wimbledon victory:

...Djokovic tossed racket after racket into the stands and kissed the grass, then decided to take it a big step further by actually eating a piece of the Centre Court turf.

“I felt like an animal; I wanted to see how it tastes,” Djokovic said. “It tastes good.”

That's from the NYT.

Gluten-free Novak Djokovic wins Wimbledon

Novak Djokovic just won Wimbledon. He beat Rafael Nadal in the finals -- the fifth time he has done so in a finals match this year. I blogged Djokovic's progress in the French Open after learning he had gone gluten-free before his ascendancy to the #1 player in the world. This time, I watched silently as he progressed through the Wimbledon bracket. The commentators noted how often Djokovic won long points (of course, the winner always tends to win more points).

This year Djokovic is 48-1, has won two Grand Slams, is now ranked #1 in the world, and has beat the top players in the world along the way. Maybe now we'll hear more about his diet.

French Open update: The Djoker cruises into the quarterfinals

Since our last Gluten-Free French Open update, Novak Djokovic has won two more matches and has advanced to the quarterfinals. He's dropped only one set so far in his four matches at the French Open. If he and Federer each win their next match, they'll meet in the semis. Nadal is still cruising too, though he has had one or two shaky matches.

Here is an article showing how dominant Djokovic's streak has been, not only in tennis, but compared to other great streaks in other sports.

A French Open worth watching

I don't think I've ever looked forward to the French Open until this year. And that's coming from someone who plays tennis. I enjoy watching Wimbledon or the U.S. Open if it's epic players (Agassi, Sampras, Federer, Nadal, Graff, the Williams sisters), but I've never found the clay courts at the French Open to be that interesting. Clay court specialists often win. Purely on the basis of color, I prefer to watch Wimbledon green to Roland Garros red. Even U.S. Open blue is easier on the eyes. Of course, I'm fickle like that.

However, as I'm sure you've seen, Novak Djokovic is on a tear in 2011, attributing part of his success to his new gluten-free diet. And the French Open starts in two days. This is the habitat where Rafael Nadal thrives. So set your DVRs and get ready to cheer for the Djoker. I may even blog some of the match results.

To kick us off, a worthwhile comment on Djokovic from Bojan:

"One more interesting thing about Novak is that he had a lot of minor injuries in past years. He had a lot of problems with conditioning and asked for a lot of time-outs, especially after 2nd set - I know that Federer was very critical of this. And then, he just exploded this season - I don't think it's just a winning attitude - he made some big changes and that change might be a paleo-like diet.

Fair warning. If Djokovic wins, it's all about the diet. If he loses, I'm sure I'll find something else to blame. Good shots, gluten-free. Bad shots, something else.

LETS GO DJOKER

Novak Djokovic goes gluten-free, becomes best tennis player in the world

Novak Djokovic is the best tennis player in the world right now. Perhaps the most dominant player in any sport, says the WSJ:

"It's no secret that Djokovic has had a breakout season, or that he has been, by any reasonable standard, the world's best athlete of 2011. On Sunday, he beat Rafael Nadal in the Rome Masters, his fourth-straight win over the Spaniard. It was his second win over Nadal on clay in two weeks, and again, amazingly, he did it without losing a set. The match ran Djokovic's 2011 record to 37-0 with seven titles."

Note: It's extremely hard to beat Rafael Nadal. It's near impossible to beat him on clay. Nadal on clay is like a bird in flight. More on Djokovic's dominance:

"Of Djokovic's 37 wins, 13 are against Top 10 players, including four against Nadal and three against Federer, who in all his years of dominance never started a season in so grand a fashion. If Djokovic reaches the French Open final, he could have 43 consecutive victories—one more than John McEnroe's record 42 to start 1984 (that streak ended in the French Open final, after McEnroe won the first two sets against Ivan Lendl).

Djokovic's 2011 on-court stats border on the absurd: He has won 89% of his service games, 43% of his return games and half of his break points. In his four matches against Nadal, he has repeatedly gotten the better of the Spaniard in rallies lasting longer than eight shots. No one has done that to Nadal in his professional career."

That's just insane -- 7 of his 37 wins (18.9%) are against Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal. So to what does Djokovic attribute his success?

"Last year, Djokovic's nutritionist discovered that Djokovic is allergic to the protein, which is found in common flours."

...

"Since last year, he's swearing off pasta, pizza, beer, French bread, Corn Flakes, pretzels, empanadas, Mallomars and Twizzlers—anything with gluten."

Of course, as the article points out, athletics can be extremely mental, dependent on confidence, and small changes (even placebos) can have large effects. And if Djokovic had gone gluten-free and played worse, then I probably wouldn't have heard or posted about it. But even so.

Go read the full article, if only to see the Journal's artistic depiction of Nadal and Federer dressed up as steaks.

Menu labeling and the three phases of restaurant adoption

Restaurants aren't stupid. They want to make a buck or two. So as various food trends grow, they often offer relevant options: low fat, heart healthy, low calorie, whatever. And now, gluten-free and paleo. What's nice is that there are a decent number of menu options that don't require much, if any, alteration to be labeled as one or the other. So it makes it easy for a restaurant to "offer" these meals. It reminds me of a good line from Robb Wolf's book, which went something like, You've eaten lots of paleo meals before -- you just haven't eaten them in a row.

So here are the three phases of restaurant adoption.

Restaurants ignore. You have to custom order. Few producers make products for you.
Restaurants re-label and tweak. They find easy, existing menu options to "offer". Niche food producers address the market.
Restaurants design specific meals, source novel ingredients, or base their entire restaurant on your concept. And the big CPGs create these products.

Natural and organic have been in phase 3 for quite some time. Gluten-free has been moving from 2 to 3. Paleo is moving from 1 to 2.

Below is a menu from suburban Detroit at a nicer restaurant. Notice the "GF" (gluten-free) next to multiple of the salad options. Do you think they invented a Tenderloin Cobb Salad, Thai Shrimp Salad, or Porter Salad just to appeal to the gluten-free crowd? Unlikely. They realized they already had dishes that were gluten-free - or close enough to easily alter - and so they simply marked which ones those were. That said, they're marking the entire menu with this label, and it's the only food label on the menu. There's no heart healthy or low fat labels.

Here's a menu from San Francisco. Notice the Paleo Steak Salad "for all you cavemen out there". Now that's what I call progress. Okay, so this is just one option, rather than a label across the entire menu, and I'm sure it's as easy as adding a few words on a dry-erase board. But I'll take it.

Ask for it

There's something important that everyone could be doing. But many of us, including myself, may not be doing it. It's easy and cheap, and makes a big difference. ASK FOR IT. Ask for grass-fed beef, ask for gluten-free beer, ask for paleo or primal options, ask for real butter, ask for real ingredients, ask for grain-free, ask for low carb. Start asking for these foods. Because companies do listen.

Here three recent examples from the last two weeks -- all at restaurants that aren't exactly paleo-friendly.

Shake Shack. This is an epic NYC burger and milkshake joint, and about as far from paleo as you could imagine. I ordered a double burger with no bun. The guy taking my order ASKED ME if I ordered this because I ate gluten-free. He entered it into the computer. They're keeping track.
Friendly's. This is a restaurant whose tagline is Where Ice Cream Makes the Meal, and the cover of the breakfast menu had a big picture of pancakes with ice cream on top. They had a $2.99 special of two eggs, two strips of bacon / sausage links, and toast. I ordered two, but substituted an extra egg for the toast. The (cute) waitress took my order, then came back and asked if I did low carb. And told me that she had been eating low carb and felt so much healthier. And had heard of paleo.
Hardees. Hey, I've been traveling a lot. I ordered a double burger with no bun, fries, or soda. They gave me a number and said they would bring out my food. A minute later, a lady came out to my table and asked if I would like my burger wrapped in lettuce. Yes, I consider that progress.

But notice that in all three places, I didn't explicitly order paleo, gluten-free, low carb, whatever. I just ordered paleo on the sly. And in all three cases, THEY RECOGNIZED THAT I WAS TRYING TO EAT A CERTAIN WAY. And they all tried to be accommodating.

Next weekened, Melissa McEwen and I are organizing a flash mob at the Chipotle Test Kitchen in NYC next weekend. Stop the soy! Come join us, it will be fun. And it will help us all get in the habit of asking for it.

If it's your regular bar, and you know they don't have it...ASK FOR GLUTEN-FREE BEER.
If you're at a vegan restaurant...ASK FOR REAL BUTTER.
If you know you're not going to order it...ASK FOR LIVER.
If you can't afford it....ASK FOR GRASS-FED STEAK.
If you're at Dunkin' Donuts...ASK FOR RAW MILK CHEESE.

Remember that there's not such thing as a stupid question. Just ask for it.

The Top 10 Health and Fitness Trends of 2010

I'm the type of person who will jump on any new trend, just because it's cool. The Thigh Master, Tai Bo -- hell, if I had been alive in the 70s I would have been pounding out the miles in newfangled pair of Nikes instead of barefoot running. Because I'm flaky like that. So let's see what Outside Magazine had to say about the Top 10 Health and Fitness Trends of 2010.

10. iFitness (health apps) -- I should track more stuff, but I don't. Tracking will continue to improve, this is here to stay.

9. Vitamin D -- Ding, ding, ding!

8. Boot Camp -- Is that like a more gimmicky form of CrossFit?

7. The Shake Weight -- This should be on the top 10 trends of the 21st century. Here's the original ad, plus the SNL spoof (hilarious adult subject matter).

6. The Gluten-Free Diet -- Gluten free is the paleo gateway drug. (via Evolvify)

5. Tone-Up Shoes and Clothes -- Tone-up clothes?? You've got to be kidding me. "Honey, I need a new tone-up clothes...I've gained weight."

4-3. P90X and TRX -- Muscle confusion will eventually go the way of the dinosaurs.

2. Barefoot Running -- Ding, ding, ding!

1. Paleolithic Fitness -- Our very own Erwan Le Corre and MovNat, picking up top honors. And the article points to a lot of paleo elements. Totally sweet.

So let's check the score board.

Dead on with 5: Vitamin D, Gluten-Free, Barefoot Running, and Paleolithic Fitness. And I'll count CrossFit as better form of Boot Camp.
Kind of missed on 1: iFitness and better tracking
Avoided 4 other fads or jokes: Shake Weight, Tone-Up Shoes / Clothes, P90X, TRX

That's a pretty damn good tally. Welcome to the epicenter of the health revolution. At least, until I go chasing the hot new trends of 2011.

Update: A few commenters have pointed out that P90X and TRX incorporate positive non-faddish developments, like HIT (high intensity training), higher movement variation, and more compound movements. You're right, and that is all good. But 10 years from now, will people still be doing P90X and TRX? I don't think so. I don't think HIT is a fad, but I do think the popularity of specific branded approaches are more likely to be fads...particularly when there is little community (CrossFit) or deeper meaning to the approach.

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.)

Chelsea Clinton's Vegan Wedding

I know you've all been glued to the New York Times live blog of Chelsea Clinton's wedding. But seriously, people -- who would ever get their celebrity gossip from a respected American newspaper? For that, we have to cross the Atlantic, where the Brits really know their tabloids. We turn to the Daily Mail for the inside scoop.

Let's see...the $3M pricetag for the wedding. The John Jacob Astor venue. The $1M engagement ring. The groom's father is a criminal. Yeah, yeah, yeah -- get to the good stuff. Ah, now we're talking: the food.

The wedding cake

LET THEM EAT CAKE

Chelsea has ordered a £7,000, five-tier, gluten-free wedding cake.

Rumours abound, but flamboyant designer Ron Ben-Israel is hotly tipped to be the man tasked with the job.

He created the cake for the gay wedding in the film Sex And The City 2.

It's great that gluten-free is really starting to take off. But a seven thousand pound cake? Seems a bit excessive to me -- that's three and a half tons. Also, I didn't see Sex and the City 2 (I'm waiting for it to come out on VHS), but if the cake is half as fabulous as the Sex in the City gourmet cupcakes, it's going to be quite a fabulous cake.

She's a vegan

WHADDYA MEAN IT'S VEGAN!

Despite her father’s famous predilection for fast food, Chelsea has been a vegan for more than a decade and has instructed society caterer Olivier Cheng to provide vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free dishes for the wedding feast.

Who knew? I wonder how Bill feels about this.

Happily for Bill, there will still be much to please those of a carnivorous bent, with grass-fed, organic beef also on the menu.

Phew. Can you imagine meat-lovers from Little Rock, Arkansas arriving at a 100% vegan wedding filled with Manhattanites? Now that would have been a spectacle. Bill lost 20 pounds for the wedding -- looks pretty good.

May the newlyweds live happily ever after and please forgive my foray into celebrity food gossip. The End.

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