I KEEP SAYING...

don’t fall for the gluten-free fad

Everyone’s promoting gluten-free food and I’m sick of it. Glutenfree cafes are on every high street; four gluten-free cookbooks came out in January; brewers are even producing gluten-free ales – and none of it makes sense.

It’s great news for the one in 100 people who has coeliac disease, and cannot digest gluten – a protein that occurs naturally in wheat, barley and rye. They now have a far larger range of foods to choose from. But the gluten-free boom isn’t being driven by coeliac sufferers, but by the large numbers of healthy people who have decided to forgo gluten too – for no good reason.

It’s unclear what’s behind this trend. There’s little scientific evidence that giving up gluten is beneficial to one’s health, and it can actually be harmful. In the US, doctors are warning that people who adopt a gluten-free diet can, if they’re not careful, end up deficient in several vital vitamins that are found in grains.