Properly Implement A Gluten-Free Diet

Gluten can aggravate various chronic diseases and even contribute to some diseases. Conversely, people who have gluten sensitivity may improve chronic conditions by avoiding gluten. Nevertheless, the media keeps saying that a gluten-free diet is not healthy or even pointless. As is so often the case, the opposite is true: gluten-free nutrition is very healthy, but only if you implement it correctly. We explain how to eat HEALTHY gluten-free.

Gluten-free diet – How to do it right

The gluten-free diet is very fashionable at the moment. But many people eat gluten-free without really knowing how to eat gluten-free and healthy at the same time. Because gluten-free does not always mean that the respective food is actually healthy. However, if you know how to practice a healthy gluten-free or low-gluten diet correctly, you will definitely benefit from this type of diet – whether you have a gluten intolerance or not.

Information on the possible effects of gluten and the symptoms of gluten intolerance can be found at the end of the text.

Gluten-free diets and the mainstream media

However, one often reads and hears that a gluten-free diet is only necessary if you have celiac disease. However, celiac disease affects only a few people (in Germany about 1 percent of the population). The rest of the population would not benefit from a gluten-free diet. On the contrary. A gluten-free diet is by no means healthy but even harbors health risks. In May 2017, there were headlines like this on almost every news and information portal:

• Gluten-free? “Not recommended,” warn experts
• Gluten-free is not a panacea
• A gluten-free diet is pointless without an intolerance
• Gluten-free for healthy people is not recommended
• Is a gluten-free diet bad for the heart?
• Anyone who eats gluten-free can endanger their health
• A gluten-free diet is so dangerous

Gluten-free diets can be healthy and unhealthy

Unfortunately, none of these portals provide their readers with actually helpful information. Neither explains that there is an unhealthy and a healthy gluten-free diet. None mentions that almost any diet can be made both unhealthy and healthy – whether it contains gluten or not. None shows how to properly implement a gluten-free diet so that it is actually healthy.

Instead, the gluten-free diet is summarily presented as dangerous, pointless, and unhealthy, a statement that testifies to significant gaps in knowledge or the desire to discourage people from actually eating a healthy diet, to confuse and unsettle them.

The gluten-free diet is not the problem

The trigger for the above headlines was little more than a study published in the British Medical Journal on May 2nd, 2017. In it, researchers evaluated questionnaires (on nutrition) from several thousand people and found the following:

A long-term diet containing gluten is not associated with an increased risk of coronary artery disease. Avoiding gluten, on the other hand, could result in eating fewer whole grains, putting you at risk of fiber and vitamin B deficiencies, which in turn could increase your risk of cardiovascular disease. A low-gluten diet is therefore not recommended to promote heart health. So what’s the problem?

Gluten-free foods must be wholesome

These researchers are not of the opinion that gluten is essential or even healthy, no, they simply associate a gluten-free or low-gluten diet with a diet that is not wholesome. They believe a gluten-free diet is low in fiber and low in B vitamins. They, therefore, believe that only a gluten-containing whole-food diet provides sufficient fiber and B vitamins.

However, this is a fallacy and shows that it is apparently not known how to eat gluten-free and whole foods at the same time. It is true that many gluten-free ready-made products are anything but healthy, as they consist almost exclusively of flour, are often heavily sweetened, and contain many additives. We wrote about this years ago: gluten-free foods that are not healthy

But there are many more gluten-containing foods made from flour that are at least as unhealthy. To check this, you only need to look at the assortment of a bakery.

However, the mere existence of unhealthy gluten-free products does not automatically mean that the entire gluten-free diet is unhealthy. Otherwise, you could also say that potatoes are unhealthy (because they are fried in old fat at the chip shop) or that fruit is incredibly harmful (just because they are also canned with sugar and they are really not healthy in this form).

All of this just goes to show that you can prepare food both healthy and unhealthy.

The gluten-free bread in the fourth column is gluten-free bread of the type found in gluten-free groceries (made from wholemeal rice and millet flour). But even this bread can keep up with wholemeal bread containing gluten when it comes to vital substances. It is only a little poorer in dietary fiber. Gluten-free bread is also of higher quality than white bread with regard to all the vital substances listed and even higher than mixed bread with regard to most vital substances.

Gluten-free bread provides a multiple of vital substances

The gluten-free bread in the fifth column is bread from our recipe section. It contains

• 30 percent more protein than a gluten-containing wholemeal bread and also significantly more protein than all other bread,
• only half as many carbohydrates, but healthy fats,
• just as much fiber as wholemeal bread, more than twice as much fiber as white bread,
• six times as much vitamin E as wholemeal bread,
• more than four times as much vitamin B1,
• just as much vitamin B2,
• more than twice as much vitamin B6,
• more iron,
• significantly more magnesium,
• more than twice as much calcium and
• almost as much zinc and potassium as whole-grain bread.

A gluten-free diet can therefore be designed to be highly wholesome, rich in fiber and vital substances, and is neither unhealthy nor harmful. You just have to know how to implement the gluten-free diet correctly, which products are suitable and which are not.

Any incomplete form of nutrition is unsuitable

Basically, the researchers, doctors, and media who warn against a gluten-free diet should rather warn against the diet low in fiber and nutrients that is practiced by the majority of the population. Because most people prefer white flour products, they eat a lot of gluten, but hardly any fiber and only a few B vitamins. These people are even reinforced in their bad eating habits by the gluten-free warnings above. In reality – as you now know – one should not warn against a gluten-free diet, but against every incomplete form of nutrition.

Conclusion: Gluten-free nutrition is healthy – if done correctly!

• There are different forms of gluten intolerance: there is not only celiac disease but also gluten intolerance that is not related to celiac disease. All those affected benefit enormously from a properly implemented gluten-free diet.
• Individual sensitivity to gluten can vary greatly. This means: Especially in the case of gluten intolerance independent of celiac disease, it may be that certain amounts of gluten are tolerated, so it is not necessarily necessary to live 100% gluten-free. A low-gluten diet is often sufficient here – especially if you first choose wholesome gluten sources and secondly avoid wheat gluten. Because spelled gluten is often much more tolerable. Small amounts of whole grain spelled products can therefore often be tolerated. To what extent gluten is avoided and to what extent it is tolerated is something that everyone affected has to try out for themselves.
• Anyone who suffers from gluten intolerance and avoids gluten or limits gluten consumption experiences significant improvements in their well-being, can alleviate existing symptoms or even heal them completely, and can consciously prevent diseases.
• Of course, if you are not gluten-sensitive, you do not have to live gluten-free or low-gluten either. That doesn’t mean, however, that gluten-insensitive people should eat baguettes, table rolls, and other products made from flour to their heart’s content.
• Because these baked goods – like gluten-free flour products – lack fiber, B vitamins, and secondary plant substances. Therefore, people who eat “normally” generally suffer from the health consequences of an incomplete diet sooner or later.
• A warning should therefore be given against an incomplete diet made from flour and thus against a diet practiced by the majority of people in industrialized nations!
• A wholesome gluten-free diet can therefore also be enjoyed by people who are not sensitive to gluten without any disadvantages.

Conclusion

The headlines quoted at the beginning are nothing more than untruths that willfully cast a very healthy diet, which is vital for gluten-sensitive people, in a bad light, defame healthy products and prevent people from consciously eating and living healthily.