The Gluten Crazies are out of control and affecting menus in restaurants
April 26, 2015- By Steven E. Greer, MD
I was eating at a French restaurant recently, and the waiter asked me if I had any allergies, such as “gluten”. This greatly upset me, because the waiter was forced to asked this. The Gluten Crazies have gotten so demanding that a French restaurant, which makes nothing but baked products using wheat and gluten, is feeling so guilty that they have to apologize and warn people about gluten in their food.
Santina, the newest restaurant by Chef Torrisi and Carbone in New York’s Meatpacking District, has decided to make all of the desserts gluten free, and they taste like crap as a result. The New York Times’ Pete Wells wrote, “Josh Ber’s desserts…the pastry tubes are limp. So is the tart shell that’s filled with a pond of dark, rich pudding to make a chocolate diplomatico; it’s thin without being crisp. All the desserts are gluten-free, a worthwhile goal, but the substitutions entail more sacrifice than they probably should. The meringue puff topped with lime custard is very good, but it could use company.”.
Chef Mark Ladner of Del Posto is starting to serve “gluten-free pasta”. In other words, he is not serving pasta at all, since it is impossible to make wheat pasta without gluten.
What is behind this “gluten-intolerance” craze? One out of three Americans think that they are “gluten-intolerant”. However, of those 100 Million people, only 13 Million really do have a medical problem called celiac disease caused by gluten. Dr. Alessio Fasano of Harvard is the man who started all of this hype back in 2003. He now feels bad about it and has written a book to reduce the hysteria.
Fear mongering books about the toxicity of wheat and gluten are selling by the millions. The author of “Wheat Belly” is a cardiologist who also thinks that CT-scans of the coronary arteries are good for you, which in fact they are harmful and useless. And, of course, America’s Quack, Dr. Oz, has talked about gluten extensively.
Avoiding gluten has an accidental benefit. It can cause people to stop eating pasta and bread, which will lower their carbohydrate intake and cause them to lose weight. Fine. But by labeling gluten in wheat as a toxin, and forcing waiters to warn people that they serve gluten, is insane.
Gastroenterology/Hepatology, Internal medicine/microbiology immunology, Nutrition, Op-Ed, Policy, Preventive Medicine, Psychiatry | apples49 | 
April 26, 2015 12:24 pm
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