Gluten Free Diet Popularity Moves to West Coast

Last week we featured a story here at Celiac-Disease.com which talked about a new fad on the East Coast.  It seems that many college kids have adopted a gluten free diet as a way to live a healthier lifestyle.  

Since that post in USA Today, other newspapers around the United States have published similar stories, with the most recent one being published over at Journal Now.   This article features some similar situations over on the West Coast:

And some people are trying the diet simply because they’ve heard it is healthy.

“A lot of people are going gluten-free … but they really don’t know why,” said Suzy Badaracco, the president of Culinary Tides, a company that forecasts food trends. “It’s just like, ‘Quick, it’s gluten-free, it must be good!’”

It was full-speed ahead for gluten-free foods at this year’s Natural Products Expo West, held in March. Attendees at the show — truly the Super Bowl of natural-food shows — swarmed around counters featuring gluten-free breads, pasta, steaming pot pies, brownies, warm muffins, cosmetics and even dog treats. (One exhibitor even advertised a flavored water as gluten-free — cheerfully admitting that, yes, water is naturally gluten-free, but what the heck.)

According to a March 2007 survey by Mintel, a market research company, 8 percent of the U.S. population looks for gluten-free products when it shops. Nielsen Co., which tracks gluten-free food in U.S. grocery, drug and mass-merchandiser stores (excluding Wal-Mart), reports that the gluten-free sector increased 20 percent in the 12-month period ending June 14, to $1.75 billion from $1.46 billion a year ago.

The number of choices also is expanding. In 2007, 700 new gluten-free products were introduced in the United States, up from 214 in 2004, according to Mintel. Consumers of gluten-free products can wander down the aisles of their local health food store — in some cases their local supermarket — and choose from an array of gluten-free pastas, cake mixes, waffles, bagels, pizzas, cookies, baby food, even beer and cosmetics. Mintel projects a 15 percent to 25 percent annual growth rate for gluten-free foods over the next few years.

I find it interesting that people believe this diet is healthy.   When I look for “normal” gluten free foods (foods that are gluten free without any altering to ingredients), it seems that most dessert items are gluten free!   If these people just want to shop in health food stores, more power to them, but they don’t have to restrict themselves to the gluten free section.  

For those of us that have a medical reason to live gluten free, we probably wouldn’t wish this diet upon our worst enemies, yet these people are being on the diet by choice!  How could that be?    A couple of things to remember about people on a gluten free diet by choice is that they don’t have to worry about things like cross contamination, and of course they do not have to live on the diet for the rest of their lives.   They can go off and on the diet whenever they want to.  

So, what do you think.  Has the gluten free diet caught on in your area?