Is eating bread making YOU feel sluggish?
Tennis ace Novak Djokovic thought so and so do growing numbers of Britons
instant soups, stock cubes, gravy granules, ready meals, energy drinks and even Mars bars, you can easily get through 15g to 20g of gluten per day.
Forget hidden sugars — hidden gluten is just as pernicious. Perhaps it’s not surprising that our tummies are objecting.
Kate Ross, 44 and a full-time mum of two, certainly found that the prevalence of gluten in everyday foods provoked her coeliac lite.
‘I developed crippling irritable bowel syndrome symptoms about four years ago. But the tests for coeliac disease and other conditions came back clear,’ says Kate, who lives in Newcastle.
‘I was given a diagnosis of IBS and my gastroenterologist suggested I give up dairy for a few weeks to see if it helped. It did, but I noticed that I was also getting crippling stomach cramps, diarrhoea and bloating if I had anything more than the tiniest amount of bread, pasta or food containing gluten.
‘So I decided to cut out gluten completely for a few weeks.
‘Within days, my symptoms disappeared completely, and so did the severe headaches and migraines that had plagued me for years. I’d had no idea they had anything to do with my diet.
‘When I went back to see my consultant, he was amazed. He said this could indicate that I might be coeliac after all, and referred me for an endoscopy.
‘However, because the investigative process searches for internal damage that gluten can cause, I had to go back to eating glutencontaining foods every day for eight weeks prior to the procedure. It was a living hell — all my symptoms returned with a vengeance.
‘Despite all that, my tests came back negative yet again. It’s infuriating to have no explanation for my gluten-related symptoms other than “intolerance”, but my body reacts in such an extreme and sometimes violent way that, regardless, I knew I had to cut out gluten completely.’
People such as Kate have been likened to the ‘canaries in the coal mine’ by some experts, including neurobiologist Dr Emeran Mayer, the author of The Mind-Gut Connection.
He believes that those with coeliac lite should be seen as an early warning of the negative impact processed foods are having upon our digestive systems and overall health. He suggests that ‘high fat content, artificial sweeteners and food emulsifiers have altered the set point of the sensors in our gut, so people with the most sensitive guts are showing signs of food sensitivities and allergies they might not previously have developed’.
No wonder, then, that giving up gluten is no longer the preserve of the glossy stars like Gwyneth — and instead seems to be becoming a real cure for ordinary people’s health problems.
Gluten exposed: the Science Behind the Hype, by Dr peter Green and Rory Jones (Fourth estate, £14.99). to order a copy for £11.24 (offer valid to August 10, 2016), call 0844 571 0640 or visit mailbookshop.co.uk. p&p is free on orders over £15.