Tag: inflammation

Gluten-Free Myth Busting

I believe it’s important to fight against gluten-free stereotypes. Yeah, the community doesn’t always help itself by making claims about gluten-free health that are, well, suspect, but most of the misconceptions about the gluten-free lifestyle comes from people who embrace the diet for all the wrong reasons.

And then there’s the media, helping perpetuate myths. For example, The Greatest published a video entitled “5 Convincing Reasons You Shouldn’t Go Gluten-Free (sic) (Unless You Have To).” Oddly, the title in the URL is more accurate, saying “Why Gluten-Free Diets Aren’t Necessarily Healthy.” And we’ll get to that in just a moment.  Continue reading “Gluten-Free Myth Busting”

Avoiding Dogmatic Diets

If I were to sum up the diet trends of the past few decades, it would be something like this, with all apologies to Michael Pollan: eat more vegetables, eat less meat, eat whole foods instead of processed foods.

Pretty simple, and it’s a philosophy I practice (almost) every meal. I don’t like dogmatic approaches to diet — I mean, except the part where no gluten will ever be part of any meal I eat. That’s not so much dogmatism as it is keeping me healthy and alive. Continue reading “Avoiding Dogmatic Diets”

Reducing Inflammation

The one thing I didn’t realize before gluten and I broke up forever was how swollen my body was, just from gluten. You will often find people who lose several pounds right after eliminating gluten from their diets — this is mostly due to the water they’ve been retaining, and, frankly, should be a clue to many of us about what impact gluten-containing ingredients have on our diets (see Tip of the Week below). Continue reading “Reducing Inflammation”