Perfect Gluten-free Show on Oprah

Back in 2006 I started an internet campaign to get Oprah to do a thorough show about celiac and gluten intolerance. Hundreds of people participated (or said they did) and e-mailed Oprah’s producers. As far as I know, all of us were ignored.

Later on, I found out that some women had been on Oprah – possibly in 2004 – and they said something incorrect about the gluten-free diet and Oprah got a ton of negative e-mails about it. This apparently put Oprah and/or her producers off talking about the gluten-free topic further. It was quite a while before you heard the term gluten-free on Oprah again.

Most famously, Jenny McCarthy appeared on Oprah to discuss how she “recovered” her son from Autism. Part of the regimen the actress used to do this was putting the child on the gluten-free, casein-free diet. We now know that some children thought to have autism actually have celiac disease or gluten intolerance. Did Jenny’s son Evan really ever have Autism? I don’t think anyone will ever know because he is probably never going to eat a ton of gluten so he can be tested for celiac. Consider the story of another child whose parents were told that he had Autism, when he really had celiac disease. Make sure to watch the videos.

Not long ago, Oprah did a cleansing diet that was free of everything you can think of – gluten, dairy, alcohol, white sugar and caffeine. I might be leaving something out but in any case, I would not want to follow the restrictive diet she did even for a week. But it was sort of fun to know that Oprah was gluten-free, if only for a short while. She of course had someone making her amazing food and therefore, did not have the same experience as someone walking out of the doctor’s office with orders to “stop eating gluten and research your new diet on the internet”.

After Jenny McCarthy’s appearance on Oprah talking about her plight to recover her child from Autism, I started dreaming of what the perfect show about celiac would be like on Oprah. First off, we need Dr. Alessio Fasano to talk about how he came to this country from Italy and asked doctors (GI’s I believe) at a conference how many people had celiac disease in the U.S. When they told him the condition was very rare here, he knew that could not be true.

Americans eat a diet very high in gluten. Therefore, they would have to have at least the same occurrence of the condition in the population as other countries. Dr. Fasano got to work and proved that almost 1 in 100 people do in fact, have celiac disease in the U.S. To date over 90% of them are undiagnosed, though many are also misdiagnosed with IBS and other conditions that untreated celiac can cause.

After Fasano’s segment is over, we need someone to help people understand exactly what the gluten-free diet is. Which foods are gluten-free and which are not. Shelley Case is the perfect person to handle this segment on Oprah. OK then - Shelley can finally dispel the gluten-free myths that seemingly will never die. How fabulous would that be? I truly believe that every person who can’t eat gluten for health reasons should be required to read Shelley’s book “Gluten-Free Diet : A Complete Resource Guide“. If everyone did that, many gluten-free myths might actually die.

Next up on the perfect Oprah show would be Danna Korn. Danna is the author of several books, including “Living Gluten-Free for Dummies” – from the famous yellow and black book series. Danna’s book “Wheat-Free, Worry-Free” (which I found in my local library) made me feel like I could actually do this gluten-free lifestyle thing. I love Danna’s writing style and delivery. She has made several TV and radio show appearances trying to get the word out about living gluten-free and how to enjoy it!

If there is to be a celebrity on the show, it might be Heidi Collins from CNN. It can NOT be Elisabeth Hasslebeck of “The View”. I’ve talked about the latter person enough that I don’t care to discuss her further. Heidi Collins’ personal story will have everyone watching the show in tears, no doubt. When she shared it with the Atlanta support group in 2007, there wasn’t a dry eye in the auditorium.

Last but not least on the perfect Oprah show, is Cynthia Rudert, MD. You might wonder why I want to have two doctors on the show. Well, Dr. Fasano deserves the credit for helping us all so he’s my pick for the doctor to explain how his studies and findings came to be. He can also talk about his push to have a vaccine for celiac disease in the future. Dr. Rudert can share are stories from her patients, about how they finally ended up in her office. The one common factor that Dr. Rudert reports that all her patients have is fatigue – some suffer with this worse than others. But they all report having this symptom.

While listening to Dr. Rudert speak might bring tears for many who realize she is telling their story in one way or another, there will be plenty of hysterically funny comments as well. That is why she has to be on the show – for comic relief – in addition to proving to people that there is a doctor out there that gets it. One that does not send her patients out the door with no resources about how to start their new life.

Earlier this week, someone sent me this article from Oprah’s website. The timing could not have been more perfect. No one knew about my article – it was just a coincidence that I was writing it at the time that Dr. Oz’s daughter posted her article. The piece does contain a few inaccuracies, which Shelley Case addresses well in the comments section. My favorite part is on the first page, where Daphane talks about how many people really don’t digest gluten well. If we all leave a comment on the article, I bet our dream Oprah show will be on sooner rather than later! 

For the follow up show, Oprah might consider asking Cynthia Kupper  from GIG and Alice Bast from the NFCA to appear. They can talk about the importance of being a member of a support group and being part of the gluten-free community in order to make things better for all of us. Each of their organizations offer gluten-free restaurant training programs that most restaurants don’t yet know are available. Think of how many calls they’d get if they were talking about the GFRAP and GREAT programs on Oprah!

Who would be on your perfect Oprah show?