celiac disease

One of the more annoying health crazes going around right now is the gluten-free diet. While it’s a boon to the very small proportion of the population who have real celiac disease and thus truly cannot tolerate gluten, at the same time gluten has become the health demon that is touted as the cause of virtually all health problems, be they major or minor, with the cure—of course!—being the now nearly ubiquitous gluten-free diet. The gluten-free diet has become so popular that restaurants and food manufacturers ignore it at their financial peril. Indeed, restaurants that don’t have some gluten…

A couple of Sundays ago (Easter, to be precise), my wife and I were sitting around yesterday reading the Sunday papers and perusing the Internet (as is frequently our wont on Sunday mornings), when I heard a contemptuous harrumph coming from her direction. She then pointed me to an article in our local newspaper entitled Gluten-free beauty products in demand among some customers. Now, I must admit that I haven't been keeping up with the gluten-free trend, other than how easily it fits within the niche of "autism biomed" quackery, where, apparently, nearly every "biomed" protocol for…

Student guest post by Ahn To There are two separate philosophies regarding the relationship between life and food. There are those that believe we only eat to live. On the other hand, there are those that believe one of life's greatest pleasures is food. I am a firm believer of the latter, thus, you can imagine my horror when I first learned of celiac disease (CD). This is a disease with no treatment except for a lifetime on a gluten-free diet, thus people with CD cannot eat many types of food. I knew then that I had to find out more about causation of CD, which includes the complex…