To put it another way, the next person you meet who goes
on about the dangers of gluten is – scientifically speaking – not on solid
ground. The non-coeliacs who avoid gluten, in fact, probably reveal more about
Western anxieties than they do about a protein once known best for giving
breads their chewy texture.
Alan Levinovitz, author of the The Gluten Lie, leads a growing
backlash. “The state of science right now,” he says, “is this: the vast
majority of people who think they react to gluten don’t.” Since the publication
of Wheat Belly (2011) and Grain Brain (2013), both treatises against gluten, a
soaring number of people – most of them in America – have sworn off it: Gwyneth
Paltrow espouses the gluten-free lifestyle, Miley Cyrus avers that it helped
her get over fatigue.
While many Asian people happily eat gluten on its own, served
fried and known as “seitan”, for the West it has become the villain in the
breadbasket. That alone might ring a warning bell: one of Ben Goldacre’s tests
for quack science is inexplicable geographical variation – based on the idea
that if something is making people sick (or well) in one part of the world, it
will probably be doing so in another.
Levinovitz suggests the spate of “gluten sensitivity”
self-diagnoses might have more to do with historical narratives than any
particular sensitivity on the lining of celebrity, or any other, intestines.
“The most famous myth in the world,” he says, “is the dietary fall from grace.
Adam and Eve go into the garden, eat the wrong food, and become mortal. So it
makes sense to us intuitively that everything that’s wrong with us can be
traced to a mistake we make with that we eat.”
To prove
that point, The Gluten Lie traces the erroneous history of diet
demonisation, from the Daoist monks who believed that grains “rotted
and befouled” the body, to the late-20th-century campaign against fat –
stripped from yogurts and so much besides (but now recommended to endurance
athletes in place of carbohydrates). Perhaps most relevant is the
scientifically bogus fatwa on MSG, the supposedly “headache-producing”
ingredient in cheap Chinese food that also happens to be found naturally in
Parmesan and tomatoes. The lesson that humanity appears slow to pick up –
perhaps because it’s so bland – is that moderation across the board is probably
the answer to all questions of diet.
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