feivel, just for your information, the correct term is “gluten intolerance”, not “gluten allergy”. If someone with celiac disease eats wheat, barley, spelt, or rye (or derivatives of these), the villi in the small intestine are damaged, causing malabsorption of nutrients. This is what causes the intestinal symptoms, poor growth/ weight loss, and other symptoms (including infertility & osteoperosis) associated with celiac disease.
Celiac disease is screened for using an antibody test & confirmed through an endoscopy to check for the intestinal damage associated with gluten consumption in celiacs. Based on screenings, 1 in 150 Americans are thought to have celiac disease.
I’ve read a lot about celiac disease & gluten-free diets, and have not encountered any “grassroots knowledge base” that believes gluten is harmful for everyone. This doesn’t even make sense, since the four gluten-containing grains are a basic part of most diets.
There are lots of people who experience various intestinal symptoms & attribute these to gluten intolerance. Also, there are those who believe that autistic symptoms can be cured by following a gluten-free diet. Personally I don’t think there’s medical evidence for the latter (unless the autistic child also has celiac), but I don’t think that parents desperate to find a way to help an autistic child are “sick, opulent, or corpulent”.
Also, I’d like to reiterate that there is nothing “indulgent” or “self-obsessed” about having to tell a 4-year-old that she’ll can’t eat her favorite cereal anymore, or telling a 6-year-old that she can’t eat the birthday cake at her friend’s party.