A Gluten-free Diet: What's Up with the Hype?

Gluten-free diets have become more and more popular, mainly because of the awareness of gluten sensitivity or inability to digest gluten by many people in recent years. People who cannot digest gluten (a protein found in barley, wheat, and rye) depend on a gluten-free diet, and people who are sensitive to gluten often seek a gluten-free diet to make digestion easier for them. The problem is, many other people jump on the gluten-free bandwagon hoping to be healthier as an outcome. Here's the question, however; aside being a better alternative for people with celiac disease (unable to digest gluten), is a gluten-free diet really the healthier way to go?

There is a massive misconception behind a gluten-free lifestyle. Assuming that foods being prepared without high-carb wheat are healthier, people who aren't gluten-resistent are starting to buy gluten-free products in the hopes of losing weight and not ingesting more carbs. Unfortunately, what makes gluten-free products more flavorful to consumers is exactly what most of us want to avoid: more calories and less fiber. Most gluten-free products contain more fats, sugars, and starch than their normal counterparts, and lack the essential B vitamins most of us need daily.

Furthermore, unless going gluten-free is actually beneficial for you, meaning you actually cannot consume gluten healthily, it's not going to save you any money, either. At my local grocery store, I saw a can of gluten-free chicken chili for $4.29! (Smith's grocery store). A single serving of this chili is a whopping 220 calories, and also contains 41% of your daily sodium! Hmm... sounds like a lot of salt and calories that will definitely show up on the waistline.

Will a gluten-free diet make you lose weight? Only where you'd rather have tons of weight- in your wallet. On top of being generally less healthy for a normal diet than non gluten-free products, a gluten-free lifestyle is also unfortunately much more expensive. While going gluten-free is wonderful for those who suffer from IBS and other issues with gluten, going gluten-free just to shed a few pounds will leave you disappointed, and possibly broke.

Sources:

How to Decode Food Labels (fitness magazine)

Smith's grocery store