Gluten Alternatives

Photo via http://www.nuts.com

Gluten Alternatives

Whether it's a fad or not, the sheer number of these gluten substitutes is staggering

I wanted to get a quick post out commenting on rice and grain alternatives. I could go crazy focusing on how many are out there and how many seem to wiggle their way into popularity overnight. White bread is now a pariah and carries the penalty of death by gluten if used in your kid's peanut butter and jelly sandwich... but don't use peanut butter, because some people may be allergic. Try almond butter, or better yet Hemp seed spread. If I was speaking this last sentence, my voice would be dripping with contempt because I think this has all gone too far. You may ask, 

"But Adam, you handsome devil, people can't help if they or their kids have allergies or celiac disease." 

Yes, I understand allergies are a huge issue and shouldn't be joked about. I work with a woman who had an episode because someone made noddles with peanut oil as an ingredient--it's serious stuff. I actually think food labels should more clearly state which food allergens they contain for ease of the consumer. I constantly have to check my snacks for peanut material now, and sometimes they sneak up on me in the oddest products. But enough about peanuts, let's get to celiac disease. I'm sure I wont be making any friends when I say gluten-free dieters are the new vegans. Celiac disease itself, while i'm sure is not fun, is not life threatening. A wheat allergy, on the other hand, is. There's a huge difference; a wheat allergy will cause all the normal allergic reactions from hives to anaphylaxis, while celiac disease will cause gas, bloating, and diarrhea... In other words, a normal night after cheap Mexican food. Celiac sufferers just can't process gluten the way that other people can, and I feel for them when I bite into my fresh-baked baguette and sip my malty beer. 

Gluten free beers do actually exist, though I haven't tried one. Via http://www.seriouseats.com/

What gets me going are these posers who cling onto the self-diagnosis that they have celiac disease because they get gassy every once and while. So they switch their diets to gluten-free which also often include the omission of things like rice, meat, and in a few cases I've heard, dairy. Why not throw out the whole food pyramid while we're at it? I'm not opposed to switching out white bread for 9-grain or whole wheat; I'm not even opposed to switching out white rice for brown or long grain, but since when was dairy a suspect? A good friend of mine is lactose intolerant--he pops a pill in the morning and goes about his day eating as much dairy as he wants. He says it's worth a little bit of pain afterwards if it means he can still eat cheese... that's my boy! Now everything is made with quinoa, farro, flax, amaranth, millet, spelt, hemp seed, buckwheat, chia seed, and sorghum, which sounds like a disease. I enjoy most of these ingredients if cooked well, but I get the feeling that they're being forced on me because of outside influence. I will most likely not be replacing the barley in my beef barley stew with amaranth--it just doesn't have the same alliteration. 

A Harvardized version of the new food pyramid, Myplate. Via http://www.hsph.harvard.edu

I'll stop back at my comment on our ever-crumbling food pyramid. What happened to eating our daily requirements of fruit, vegetable, dairy, meat, and whole grains in the correct amount for a balanced diet? Now grains are on the shit list, meaning yet more vitamins and minerals that people wont be getting through something other than a multivitamin. I think the worst case scenario would be a gluten-free diet with no diary products or meat. Unless you love beans, that sounds like a severe lack of nutrition to me. Most of the vegetarians and vegans I know tend to lean towards eating pasta every night, so if they can't have that, what is there? Sure, they can switch to soy products like tofu or even seitan... but wait! Seitan is made from wheat gluten, so that's out. So it's beans and tofu for them, meaning if the main purpose of their dieting was to get rid of bloating and gassiness, then they're shit out of luck. 

Let's not forget to mention a lack of Omega 3 that would come from eating too much soy--if omega 3 and 6 isn't balanced correctly, life expectancy drops. This dieter would have to be eating a lot of flax seed or sashimi to get that ratio back to where it should be. If you care to read more about this, take a look at Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, which is an all-time favorite book of mine. He comments on this Omega 3 and 6 ratio a lot better than I ever could.

Okay, now this is getting out of hand. What was meant to be a short commentary of gluten and wheat substitutes turned into an all out battle of what I consider to be a well-balanced diet. Now I want to get into a lovely term used to describe the French, the French paradox, but that will have to wait for my next post. I'll close this lengthy diatribe with one statement: I defend a proper diet. I'll get into that more in my next post as well. 

- Adam from Tipped Mixology