Gluten-free diet: A fad or something more serious?

If you haven’t heard, apparently Victoria Beckham and Gwyneth Paltrow are getting fit and healthy by going on a gluten-free diet. They say that since going on the diet they have more energy than they’ve ever had before.

They even say that the diet has changed their lives, “I can run a mile in two and a half minutes” they cry. Good for them. Brilliant. Are you starting to sense sarcasm in my tone?

This is another fad diet that celebrities like to try. Do you remember the Atkins diet, Cabbage Soup diet, Raw Food Diet, Baby Food diet etc.? We are all great followers, fanning through the new diet books on the supermarket shelves while glugging great quantities of green tea with a dash of cayenne pepper and a side dish of raw broccoli.

These diets quickly catch on and become another ‘fad’ diet. But this latest one has really annoyed me. I have coeliac disease and therefore for health reasons, cannot eat gluten. Like 1 in 1,000 people in the UK, eating gluten (wheat, oats, rye and barley) will make me seriously ill. It isn’t a fad diet for us. It is a diet for life which if not followed, will lead to osteoporosis and cancer.

Someone who can’t eat gluten due to medical reasons knows that the diet isn’t as simple as just cutting out bread and pasta. It’s about reading every label on the back of food, understanding the derivatives of wheat, oats, rye and barley for example malt and knowing that it is hidden in so many foods, knowing that cross contamination of foods will make us just as ill, knowing that when we eat out we will have to make do with a salad because you just can’t trust the chef (Mind you, even a salad can be tricky.

Did you know that there are some mayonnaises that contain gluten? Oh, and you can forget the croutons on your Caesar Salad). But the worst is that look that a waiter gives you when you say you can’t eat gluten and they roll their eyes and think ‘oh, another one on a fad diet’.

It’s almost like he deliberately wants to go into the kitchen and rub flour onto all your lettuce leaves. Even worse is if they tell you that, hand on heart, the chef is very well aware of the dangers of eating gluten if you are a coeliac and swears that there is nothing on your plate that has gluten in it.

But when your plate arrives, you wonder what the chef used to thicken the sauce or if the chips were cooked in the same oil as something that was covered in breadcrumbs or batter. Believe me, Victoria and Gwyneth, it’s a danger zone out there. I feel compelled though to write to all the celebrities out there desperate to plunge themselves into the gluten free world and warn them immediately about the purposely made ‘gluten free’ products that are on our supermarket shelves.

Not only are they ridiculously expensive but full of sugar and butter to make up for the lack of gluten. If you are wanting to get rid of those ‘muffin tops’, gluten free products are not the way to go, girlfriends.

Like me, many coeliacs are diagnosed late in life and so still have the memory of hot, buttered toast or freshly baked croissants so we are often seen with our trolleys full and writing out cheques for gluten free pizzas, breads and biscuits in the supermarket.

I even dream some nights that I’m eating a Victoria Sponge Cake and it’s melting in my mouth as I’m sleeping. I wake up covered in saliva and worried that it wasn’t a dream and I did in fact raid the cupboard in the night and will therefore be very ill for the next few days. Sad really. Some people dream of fast cars or sandy beaches and I dream of cupcakes and Yorkshire Puddings.

So, Victoria and Gwyneth, by celebrating your new found energy and possible skinniness you have spoilt things for us poorly souls whose lives revolve around rice cakes and bananas.

Think about the damage that these fad diets are doing for people who need to be taken seriously with their diet and next time you’re having your gluten free meal think about what may be in your soya sauce, stock cubes, breakfast cereal, gravy, bag of crisps etc. as gluten is hidden in so many things that it isn’t just about cutting out pizzas and naan breads.

It’s a whole other world out there. You’ve been warned.

Charlotte K. Arrowsmith is an English language lecturer at the UAE University, Al Ain.