Companies are exploiting the widely-held belief that gluten-free products are healthier, when in fact very few people need to avoid gluten.
Photo Credit: Carole Feldman/AP Photo

Gluten-free is big business and misunderstood

Companies are making billions of dollars selling gluten-free products around the world when there is little evidence they are a healthier choice for anyone but few who have celiac disease.

Gluten is the protein found in wheat, barley and rye that gives bread its elasticity.  People with celiac disease have an autoimmune disorder triggered by gluten. About 35,000 Canadians have it, yet it’s estimated another four to seven million Canadians avoid gluten.

Listen‘A gluten-free craze’

“Now, everyone is trying to avoid gluten. There really is gluten-free craze,” says Timothy Caulfield, the Canadian Research Chair in Health Law and policy and a professor at the University of Alberta. He says billions of dollars are being made around the world on gluten-free products including food, hair products, even pet food. “It really is a major marketing trend.”

Gluten-free products are often marketed as a healthy food choice. “This is I think one of the great misnomers out there,” says Caulfield. “There is no evidence that eating gluten-free is a healthy lifestyle choice,” unless you have been diagnosed with celiac disease.

Gluten-free can be less healthy

He notes the Mediterranean diet is the diet that most professionals say is the healthy way to eat and it includes whole grains. Other dieticians say that gluten-free products often have sugar and salt in them and lack fibre, which makes them less than healthy food choices.

‘Gluten-free products much more expensive’

People may be looking for solutions to digestive problems or weight problems, and Caulfield says some “latch on to” gluten-free products as a possible solution. There is no evidence they help people lose weight, he says. And while there is some evidence that some people may have a sensitivity to gluten, he says there is no hard proof.  So he sees no reason why people would spend the extra money on what are often much more-expensive, gluten-free products.

See a Marketplace special report on the gluten-free craze produced by the public broadcaster CBC.
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