Gluten-free Foods Showing up on Television!

It was a couple of years ago when I first heard the term gluten on TV. The show was canceled but the comment was “no thanks, I have a gluten allergy” to which the reply was “who doesn’t these days?”. I thought it was hysterically funny and screamed with delight. My husband ran downstairs to see if I’d hurt myself. He wasn’t so amused by me startling him.

After that there was a gluten-free shout out on Scrubs, Men in Trees and Medium, to name a few. Recent gluten-free comments have been on 90210,  Royal Pains and many Food Network shows. Last weekend one of the chefs there mentioned she got free gluten-free bread at Chelsea Market in NYC and had French toast for weeks. Rachel Ray often mentions the chicken stock she uses is gluten-free.

On an episode of the Tori Spelling show on Bravo, Tori made Gluten-Free Pantry brand brownies for an open house event. She returned home to find no one ate the brownies. There was never a mention why she made gluten-free brownies – just the showing of the box as she read the directions to make them.

The absolute best TV mention of gluten I’ve ever seen was on the now canceled ABC show Cave Men. Actually, the entire episode was about gluten. Someone was running for mayor and his platform was to take down – no kidding – the “gluten lobby”. It was the only episode of the show I’ve seen and it was hysterically funny – but probably not as funny for gluten eating viewers.

The day after the Cave Men show aired, the ABC website crashed due to so many people going online to watch the full episode. The site came back up the next day and then the show was removed about a week later. It was also removed on every other site it had been added to. ABC did not reply to thousands of viewer requests to put the “gluten” episode back online. Whose feathers got so ruffled over there at ABC? Some major advertiser must have been unhappy about comments like “they put gluten in everything!”.

Speaking of ABC, last night on World News the last story was about  journalist Evan Ratliff, who tried to disappear off the grid. Wired Magazine ran a contest and if Ratliff could disappear for a full month he’d win $3000. If someone found him, they’d win $5000.

On the news story last night, they showed a card on the screen about Evan which clearly listed ”ALLERGIC TO GLUTEN”. It was on the screen for a good five seconds and the reporter on ABC mentioned  “allergic to gluten” and “gluten-free pizza” well!

Guess where the hiding Evan was caught? Picking up a gluten-free pizza in New Orleans! It seems as though his gluten-free diet led to him being found. Now that is what I call great publicity for our cause. This story is all over the internet, though only those of us that are gluten-free think that the neatest part of it is that the guy can’t eat gluten!

Here is an except from the article :

But Jeff Reifman, CEO of social media software provider NewsCloud, uncovered Ratliff’s secret identity and tracked him to New Orleans. Noting that “Gatz’s” Twitter account had started following a business called Naked Pizza online, Reifman figured the writer eventually would head to Naked Pizza, the only New Orleans pizza joint with a gluten-free option.

I didn’t even know there  was any gluten-free pizza in the Big Easy and was gluten-free the only time I’ve ever been. You can read the full story and watch the video about the disappearing journalist here. Enjoy!