Anti-gluten frenzy vs. pro-wheat comeback?

PositionDigestion

Americans at one time lived their lives utterly unconcerned about the gluten in their diets, but an anti-gluten craze that erupted in the last decade has become so prominent that it spawned a $16,000,000,000-a-year industry. Gluten became branded as the enemy of good health; bestselling books scared the public away from wheat; and foods marketed as gluten-free popped up everywhere.

However, it is time to take a deep breath and reevaluate this whole "wheat-is-a-villain" attitude, maintains John Douillard, former nutrition counselor and director of player development for the NBA's New Jersey Nets and author of several books, most recently, Eat Wheat: A Scientific and Clinically-Proven Approach to Safely Bringing Wheat and Dairy Back into Your Diet. "Wheat was found guilty without a fair trial and there are risks when we just blindly take a food that people have eaten for 3,500,000 years and remove it from our diets."

Still, Douillard acknowledges that avoiding gluten is the right move for certain individuals. "People with celiac disease should avoid gluten; there's no doubt about that but, for the greater majority of people, the anti-gluten frenzy has gone too far and needs to be dialed back."

Far from being a dinner-table scoundrel, wheat can be beneficial, helping to lower the risk of diabetes, obesity, and Alzheimer's disease. "The real problem is that processed foods have changed our digestive system. That's why people often feel bad when they eat wheat, but taking foods out of the diet won't fix what processed foods have done to your system. That just kicks the problem down the road, leaving people at risk for more serious health concerns later on."

So, if going wheat-free is not...

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