I used to wonder which was more misunderstood: the carb free diet or the fat free diet. Put them together and multiply by a thousand, and you have the most misunderstood diet of all time: the gluten free diet.
First, break the myth: just because it’s gluten free doesn’t mean it’s healthy. So all the confused bloggers talking about how they tried it and didn’t lose weight, binged afterward, had cravings, some gained weight…yeah, all that WILL happen if you turn to horrendous junk food that happens to be gluten free.
If I started eating the gluten free sugar loaded, mega-processed, nutrient dead, toxic chocolate wafer stuff, I’d gain weight too!
BTW, gluten binds to your brain the same way heroine does, same opioid(1) activity, so some of those symptoms are withdrawal symptoms and do go away within a few weeks.
Junk food aside, if we talk real food vs real food, gluten free is better for you (whether you have Celiac Disease or not) for one simple reason: no one digests gluten. No one. And it created varying levels of gut permeability “Leaky Gut” in 100% patients in a study that included both Celiac and non-Celiac subjects.(2)(3) You don’t need a PhD to know that holes in your intestines are a bad thing and foods that cause it should be avoided.
I can hear you say it: “But I’ve been eating gluten all my life and I’m fine with it”…
…I said that at age 39, even as I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease and after several hospital admissions: “But doc, I’ve been eating gluten my whole life with no problem, this can’t be”. Yes, it can. BTW that wasn’t true. Once I re-traced steps and thought about eczema as a kid, headaches that I used to blame my stressed work schedule for, and other symptoms we are all taught are “normal”. Symptoms my Mom told me she had and so did 5 generations before me. “They’re hereditary dear.” No, they’re not - because I wiped out 120 years of my family’s symptoms 90 days after I went gluten-free. So much for DNA.
The medical specialists that have been focused on the gluten issue for the last decade are finally saying no one actually digests gluten. Some people excrete it better than others, but they don’t fully digest it the way they digest real food.
The other important fact here is that gluten contains absolutely no nutrients that you really need(4), so why stress your system with this food that’s easily replaceable? Just be sure to replace it with real, pure, food.
To answer the original question of does gluten make you fat: all super-starches do. Unless you work out strenuously every day, or are a marathoner and need the extra carbs, you’ll maintain body weight more easily with Healthy gluten-free food… “Healthy” is capitalized for a reason.
Jaqui Karr, cgp, cvd, csn
REFERENCES
(1)-Paola Bressan and Peter Kramer. "Bread and Other Edible Agents of Mental Disease" Front Hum Neurosci. 2016; 10: 130. Published online 2016 Mar 29. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2016.00130
(2)-Justin Hollon, Elaine Leonard Puppa, et al. Effect of Gliadin on Permeability of Intestinal Biopsy Explants from Celiac Disease Patients and Patients with Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity. Nutrients. 2015 Mar; 7(3): 1565–1576.
(3)-Paola Bressan and Peter Kramer. "Bread and Other Edible Agents of Mental Disease" Front Hum Neurosci. 2016; 10: 130. Published online 2016 Mar 29. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2016.00130
(4)-R Ciccocioppo, A Di Sabatino, and G R Corazza. "The immune recognition of gluten in coeliac disease" Clin Exp Immunol. 2005 Jun; 140(3): 408–416. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2249.2005.02783.x