Gluten-Free Nutrition

by Natasha Chart

categories: Eats, Health

Published June 06, 2009 @ 10:31AM PT

More unfortunate news about gluten-free diets ... many of the packaged formulations of gluten-free foods imitating some gluten-containing product can lack essential nutrients. Though there's a good way to avoid this pickle:

... The concern was raised by Melinda Dennis, nutrition coordinator at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Celiac Center, who said that celiac patients should look to “unconventional but nutritionally well-rounded substitutes” for gluten-containing grains, like amaranth, buckwheat, teff, millet, quinoa and sorghum. She calls these the “super six” because of their high nutritional value.

Dennis added that another option for celiacs is to choose “celiac-friendly” cuisines, like Indian, Thai, Mexican and Ethiopian (which uses teff). ...

Michael Pollan would approve, I'm sure. His book, "In Defense Of Food", talks extensively about the generally health-promoting effects of traditional diets. All traditional diets. From the plant-oriented to the animal product-heavy, the fatty and the alcohol soused, they all produce better health outcomes than a diet filled with what the FDA would formerly have required companies to label as "imitation" foods. Because, with nutrition engineering every bit as much as with genetic engineering, the food industry barely knows the effects of what it's doing.

Something that's had vitamin A surgically added to its ingredient roster will never approach the healthfulness of a well-rounded stew containing carrots, greens and enough fat to help you digest the fat-soluble vitamins present.

Hardly a shock that the best advice to people who need to avoid gluten (which, if you aren't intolerant of or allergic to it, is generally very healthy) is to embrace time-tested cuisines that produced generations of healthy people without depending on it. This must have crossed your mind if you've ever had to eat a prepared lunch that you made 'gluten-free' by peeling the bread and crumb-contaminated lettuce off of the sandwich guts, giving away the cookie or roll, and eating whatever scrawny piece of fruit was included.

Anyway, I like gluten-free snack foods as much as the next pastry-deprived person, but they aren't a diet.

(Photo credit: avlxyz on Flickr.)