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Gluten Free Craze

Discussion in 'Non-Vegas Chat' started by Publius, Jan 25, 2015.

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  1. Publius

    Publius Living the Dream

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    I love all the food fads that come and go. Now I know gluten sensitivity does affect some people, but the fad has gotten out of control. Today at the grocery store I came across Apples that were supposedly "gluten free". I then saw that these Apples cost about $3 more than the "normal" apples. The kicker was that people were spending more money on them and actually buying them, so I guess there is a lot of suckers out there. Anyone else see anything like this recently?
     
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  2. Valgal

    Valgal VIP Whale

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    People actually paid extra for gluten free apples?? -- Apples do not contain grain - they are gluten free. The only way they can contain gluten is if someone dusted them with flour or grain etc. Some people will buy anything. I think the whole gluten-free thing has gone overboard. I limit my carbs so I don't eat a lot of gluten - just because of the carbs. I would buy organic items if they were not so darn expensive.
     
  3. Publius

    Publius Living the Dream

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    There are a lot of suckers out there that will buy into whatever the current scam/fad out there
     
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  4. smartone

    smartone VIP Whale

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    Ever notice (in my best Andy Rooney) the people who seem to be in need of gluten-free products seem to be the same people who are just a tad "off" in other ways?
     
  5. Sonya

    Sonya Queen of VMB

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    I did 10 months of "gluten-free" last year to rule out a food sensitivity that might be related to the health problems I've been having. I talked to a lot of nutritionists, doctors and people with Celiac and the consensus seemed to be that most of that food labeled "gluten free" was processed garbage and not worth the money. I lost quite a bit of weight eating grain free and many of my friends asked about it and wondered if they "should do it" to lose weight. Ugh.

    I, personally, hate those labels. People would ask me, "So you're paleo now?" or "Are you doing South Beach or something else?" Um... I'm trying to eat clean so I can live to see 50, dammit! Stop trying to put me in a box! :wink2:
     
  6. Valgal

    Valgal VIP Whale

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    My husband had a bone marrow transplant 25 years ago -- since then his immune system is screwed up (of course) Lots of allergies and intolerances. He had a whole work up on allergies that our insurance did not cover (of course) - he was seeing a local doctor that was specializing in allergies. His main complaint was headaches -- he was diagnosed with multiple environmental and dietary allergies -- especially gluten. He changed his whole diet and tried to live in a plastic bubble -- would go in for expensive allergy shots and food allergy drops- (again insurance wouldn't cover) --- after almost 2 years of this nonsense - guess what??? His headaches were not better. When he asked the office nurse why he was no better she looked at his chart and said that it was only the skin test that was positive -- the gluten was not related to his headaches -- and in fact nothing that he supposedly tested positive for was related to his headache. -- The headaches were the only reason he was seeing the allergy doctor. -- Would have been nice to know then. He quit going to this doctor after that. After years of sinus infections and frequent rounds of steroids and antibiotics he had a balloon sinuplasty last year --- My deductible is horribly huge -- still paying on that bill from over a year ago- But, he doesn't get as many headaches and has only had one sinus infection in that last year and a half. --
     
  7. Aces and Eights

    Aces and Eights VIP Whale

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    I'm wondering if they mislabeled "organic" for gluten-free."
     
  8. Publius

    Publius Living the Dream

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    No it wasn't mislabled, the apples even had stickers on them from the company that said gluten free. I should've took a picture of them. The organic ones they had were cheaper than the "gluten free" ones. I could tell the company and the store are trying to cash in. Reminds me of the low carb craze years ago
     
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  9. Snidely

    Snidely VIP Whale

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    The gluten-free fad is about over. Although a lot of people feel better eliminating grains from their diet.
     
  10. Aces and Eights

    Aces and Eights VIP Whale

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    Wow! Soon they will label them "fat-free" and increase the price on them even more. Lol
     
  11. leo21

    leo21 VIP Whale

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    All apples are gluten free. Anyone who really has a sensitivity to gluten should already know that. I would suspect the price had more to do with the variety than the gluten free tag.
     
  12. bardolator

    bardolator Lifelong Low Roller

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    I bake my own bread. I ADD gluten. Eat gluten free if you're allergic to gluten. The rest is nonsense.
     
  13. Bubbavegas

    Bubbavegas VIP Whale

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    YUM Gluten free apples, gotta get me some of them LOL. There is SOME science backing up the gluten free fad, but far from the extent we are led to believe and some in the medical field say at most around 6-10% are actually gluten sensitive. There is more backing up that the reason for the surge in what many call and get diagnosed as gluten sensitivity and is not a gluten allergy in reality is the change in wheat due to GMO which as anyone from wheat country can tell you is far from the same plant it was just 30 years ago as they have designed the crop to have more grain and less stalk. Where it was not uncommon in with what you might call heirloom wheat to grow 8 ft. high now it is less than half as tall. We make our own bread and use the heritage wheat, not due to gluten but as a gardener I see the difference in GMO crops I harvest as well as buy and let me tell you what we make with the heirloom wheat blows the commercial wheat bread out of the water.
     
  14. Someone

    Someone High-Roller

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    there is no GMO wheat grown commercially anywhere in the world

    there are test plots of GMO wheat and there have been very isolated incidents of GMO wheat showing up in a shipment to Asia and in a field in Oregon, but GMO wheat is not grown commercially and probably will not be for quite a while if ever

    the wheat you are talking about is traditionally raised and hybridized wheat using the same crop breeding techniques that man has used since they first selected crops for breeding and standardization which goes back centuries and that is not a GMO technique nor does it produce a GMO crop

    and most commercially available GMO crops like corn and soypeas focus more on resistance to a herbicide, insect or disease resistance or salinity adaptability or drought/water stress tolerance instead of the focus of the GMO modification being on producing a change in the part of the crop that is harvested and consumed.....there is GMO research that focuses on a change in the traits or characteristics of the harvested and consumed parts of the crop in question, but as of now there are much larger gains to be made with the other mentioned attributes VS trying to change the characteristics of the plant parts that are harvested and consumed and there are plenty of conventionally produced crops with characteristics that are highly desirable that could benefit from GMO technology transferred into them VS the other way around

    in other words there are already many types of wheat with all types of gluten content and other characteristics available from conventional breeding and the reason they are not mass produced is because of lack of demand or more than likely susceptibility to disease or insect pressures and thus they will not produce a profitable or viable crop for the effort and resources expended

    it would make much more sense to insert available GMO genetics into those crops and then select the ones that retained the desirable grain characteristics and had the desired GMO traits VS trying to take an available GMO seed line with less desirable seed traits and trying to insert genes for the desired seed traits into it.....that would be doing it "backwards"

    there are a few examples where doing it "backwards" might make sense, but very few and for very specific reasons

    but as of now there is no commercially grown GMO wheat and probably will not be for a long time
     
  15. queuetee

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    We did see lots of FAT_FREE stickers on products that anyone but a fool would know were when that was the hysteria. The Gluten thing has risen to ridiculous proportion, but I feel sorry for those who do have that sensitivity.

    The other grocery game is the rise in price on the "current" hot vegetables------kale and brussel sprouts. Since they are all over the food channels, the prices have gotten very high.
     
  16. Bubbavegas

    Bubbavegas VIP Whale

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    You mean FDA approved right, considering that MON71800 was found to be the strain growing in Oregon in 2013 which was 9 years after Monsanto supposedly abandoned the project and in 99 there was GMO wheat in a shipment to Thailand also from the NW. There are also chemical, gamma, and x-ray mutagenesis, i.e., the use of obnoxious stimuli to induce mutations that can then be propagated in offspring. That is how BASF’s Clearfield wheat for example was created by exposing the seeds and embryos to the industrial chemical, sodium azide, that is highly toxic to humans. Hybridization, backcrossing, and mutation-inducing techniques are difficult to control, unpredictable, and generate plenty of unexpected results. In short, they are possibly worse than genetic modification. The agribusiness powers that be along with the FDA like to use those terms of hybridization, backcrossing and such to justify these dwarf strains of wheat as it sounds better to the general public than GMO does when all in all they are for all intents and purposes one in the same.
     
  17. hammie

    hammie VIP Whale

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    Sales of organic mushrooms, especially the exotics, are growing double digits. Several studies about the anti cancer properties of Reishi and Shiitake have also been published. Technically, mushrooms are fungi not vegetables.
     
  18. Someone

    Someone High-Roller

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    exposing a seed to toxic chemicals and or radiation is still not a GMO technique

    and it matters little of the chemical is harmful to humans and or if radiation is harmful to humans because it is not as if that chemical or radiation continues to contaminate the seeds that come after the first plants are grown

    exposing a seed to a chemical or radiation to cause a genetic mutation or the expression of a genetic trait does not mean that chemical or that radiation is in all of the seeds that then come from the offspring of that parent it just means those seeds from the offspring that parent now have the genetic expression of the parent they came from......the chemical and or radiation does not continue on with the offspring it ends with the seeds that were exposed and that is that

    and just because a gene is mutated that does not mean it is harmful or the resulting crop it produces is harmful

    dozens and dozens of food. health and safety services and agencies across the globe run test on GMO crops and on all types of crops not just the USA and time and again they find GMOs to be safe and approve them for import and for production in the various countries and time and again those that find a reason not to approve them end up to be the most backwards places on earth with the lowest qualities of life and some of the shortest life expectancies and the need to keep farmers as substance farmers living as peasants for control of overall society

    people live far longer than they ever have in today's time and it is not because of silly diet fads or junk "science" based on the fear of a parent seed being exposed to something to then see what the results of that are or even the fear genetic transfer

    if you are concerned about what food is exposed to now and the safety aspects of food today you would have had a heart attack 30 or 40 years ago much less before that

    the vast majority of people on the gluten free fad would not even know what gluten came from or what it is and would not know how to avoid it if some PT Barnum did not place a sticker on the package to make sure he could separate a fool from their money faster

    I would imagine you could make a mint labeling ordinary wheat flour as gluten free if you could get it on the store shelf and all but the extremely small % of people with an actual allergy would never know the difference
     
  19. Sonya

    Sonya Queen of VMB

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    Let's watch the trend of this discussion. We can easily devolve into what would be determined to be "political" and a violation of the rules. Let's keep this away from the topic of what is GMO and is it good/bad, and more about how stupid it is to label an apple "gluten free". :wink2:
     
  20. RiddickBull

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    Gluten free ebola.
     
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