Science Has Begun Taking Gluten Seriously

Every year more money is being spent studying the now-infamous plant protein gluten. The studying raises more questions. That leads to more money being spent. And then more questions.

If there was more than one lecture in medical school where gluten came up, I don’t remember it. The one I remember was in 2007, in the context of celiac disease. After the lecturer mentioned “gluten,” a classmate raised a hand and asked him to repeat himself. People who eat what?

Of course gluten, which comes from wheat, rye, and barley, was all around us then, as it is now. It’s a sort of mortar in the walls of the modern food system, in so much of what we eat or otherwise ingest and apply to ourselves. But we were barely, if at all, aware of it.

When someone with celiac disease eats gluten, it causes an immune reaction that destroys the lining of the small intestine. But as long as people with celiac disease avoid gluten, they’re fine. Got it. And like most medical doctors, that’s what I remember learning about gluten.

Cut to a decade later, and this month there is a headline that says eating gluten doesn’t cause people to develop heart disease.

Heart disease. I don’t actually have a “no shit” folder but my trained impulse was to commandeer a file