Never let the truth get in the way of a good brand story, as Bord Bia obliquely illustrated this week. Research from the state agency has found that 20% of Irish people shop for gluten-free food regularly. Yet, gluten intolerance (coeliac disease) affects only 1% of the population.
Marketing spiel will tell you that a gluten-free diet is the healthier choice. Medical experts won’t. There isn’t a shred of compelling evidence that avoiding gluten will make you healthier, wealthier or wiser, if you don't have an existing sensitivity/intolerance to it.
Despite this, the gluten-free food market in Ireland is now worth some €66m, up 36% since last year. According to Bord Bia’s research, the gluten-free diet fad is especially popular among the upper and middle class earners, over-indexing in the Munster area and among pre and older families.
Around 78% of Irish people who follow a gluten-free diet are not diagnosed as coeliac. Moreover, a significant proportion of people surveyed for Bord Bia’s research could not articulate what gluten was. However, they were confident about where to both find and avoid it.
Coeliac Godsend
For the genuine coeliac sufferer, gluten-free products are a godsend, allowing them to enrich their diets with many products they otherwise can’t stomach. Gluten itself is a protein found in grains of barley, wheat, rye and most oatmeal.
In Association with
When gluten is ingested by a coeliac, their body’s immune system mistakenly reacts and goes on the attack. This causes the small intestine to become inflamed, reducing the absorption of nutrients. Over time, the condition can cause a range of symptoms, including nausea, migraine, various bowel complaints and weight fluctuation.
Coeliac disease is an autoimmune condition, inherited genetically. Because its symptoms can be gradual and troublesome in the long term, many sufferers don’t know they have it. Onset can also be triggered by illness, viral infection and environmental factors, such as a high-gluten diet.
The only treatment for coeliac disease is switching to a gluten-free diet, which can be tricky considering the ubiquity of wheat, barley and other grains in all sorts of foodstuffs.
Products typically off the menu for coeliacs will include most breads and cakes, pasta, beer, soups, cereals, chocolate, ready meals and sauces (including many salad dressings). However, gluten-free varieties of these products are now supermarket staples, although they tend to come at a premium price.
There are plenty of naturally gluten-free products to choose from also. Meat, fruit and vegetables, rice, potatoes, fish and lentils are fine for coeliacs if eaten fresh, while even oats can be eaten by 95% of coeliac sufferers after they are specially cleaned and prepared.
No Evidence
Coeliac diets evidently appeal to non-sufferers on the basis that if gluten can harm anyone, then it must in itself be unhealthy. There’s little medical evidence for this, however.
Among the critics of gluten-obsessed dieters is Dr Daniel A. Leffler, director of clinical research at the Celiac Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He argues that a large proportion of people who cut gluten from their diets will derive no significant benefit.
Leffler adds that the consequent lack of whole wheat in gluten-free diets also takes much-needed fibre out of the dietary system, which would have to be replaced with other food.
Avoiding whole grains may strip gluten – which is nutritionally not of much use – from your diet, but you are also throwing out B vitamins, iron and other minerals found in these grains at the same time.
The vagaries of celebrity and sports culture are also pushing non-coeliacs to seek out ‘free-from’ food products as a matter of necessity. That hasn’t clarified the muddled thinking around gluten-free diets though: for every Novak Djokovic (who is coeliac) championing gluten-free fare there’s an Andy Murray saying that the diet made him feel weaker.
In an article published in the Journal of Pediatrics in 2016, Dr Norelle Reilly of Columbia University Medical Center in New York, summed things up well. She wrote: “There is no evidence that processed gluten-free foods are healthier than their gluten-containing counterparts, nor have there been proven health or nutritional benefits of a gluten-free diet.”
She also noted: “There are no data to support the theory of an intrinsically toxic property of gluten for otherwise-healthy and asymptomatic adults and children.
“Gluten-free packaged foods frequently contain a greater density of fat and sugar than their gluten-containing counterparts.”
Market Growth
Bord Bia’s Paula Donoghue, explaining the significant growth of gluten-free market in Ireland, pointed out that its products are now stocked across the retail chain, rather than just in pharmacies and health food stores.
She added: “As a nation, we’re increasingly conscious of our diet, with 87% believing we have a healthy diet.” Regarding the gluten-free fad, Paula suggested that Irish food companies can help play a part by “addressing any confusion on their specific product offerings”.
Still, Bord Bia cannot resist plugging the “huge opportunity” for the Irish gluten-free sector, even if gluten is harmless to almost all of the Irish consumers it is there to facilitate. Specifically, there is room for more offerings in gluten-free sauces, noodles, frozen foods and alcoholic drinks.
Says Paula: “Now is the time for food producers to increase availability as demand is there. Consumers have high expectations around quality so we recommend that companies work towards positioning products and brands that are natural and taste great but just happen to be gluten free. Bread is the barometer product for gluten free, as fresh bread is the product they miss most.”
She continued: “Consumers are also wary of what is lost in terms of nutritional content and what replaces gluten. This presents an opportunity for food manufacturers to meet long-term dietary needs of these shoppers through fortification in calcium or fibre.”
Photo: Michael Kelleher, Goodness Grains, with Orla Donohoe Bord Bia (Pic: Fennell Photography)
