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Stuff About Going Gluten-Free...

Saturday, 27 December 2014 00:10

By Michele Tuttle (usatriathlon.org)

Triathletes are very tuned in to nutrition. So, unless your training has taken you off-planet, you’ve probably noticed the number of gluten-free products on your grocery store’s shelves. And, you probably have a friend, relative or co-worker (or two or three) who’ve shared their amazing transformations from going gluten-free. Or perhaps you’ve even tried the gluten-free approach yourself thinking THIS might be answer to solving your digestive, weight or other health-related issues.

Think very carefully before you cross the bread, pasta, cereal, couscous, bagels and other products made from wheat off your shopping list. Why? Because you will also ...

be removing some key nutrients from your diet like B vitamins, folate, iron and zinc — not to mention fiber — that are essential for everyone but particularly important for endurance athletes.

Most of us (97 percent) digest wheat and its protein, gluten, just fine. After all, humans have been eating wheat for about 10,000 years. A small percentage of people (less than 1 percent) have celiac disease, a genetic condition causing an autoimmune reaction to gluten and severe damage to the intestinal tract. Another small percentage is gluten sensitive, a delayed reaction to wheat leading to vague symptoms that can be hard to pinpoint. If you have celiac disease or have determined that you are gluten sensitive, you certainly need to avoid all sources of wheat and gluten. However, for the remaining 97 percent of us, going gluten-free can have some serious nutritional downsides.

Foods made from whole wheat flour as well as enriched wheat flour (yes, the white stuff) provide many nutrients (thiamin, niacin, folate and iron) that tend to get discounted or flat out ignored. Nutritional deficiencies such as beriberi (lack of thiamin) and pellagra (lack of niacin) are almost never seen in the United States any more because flour has been enriched for more than 70 years. Recently, the addition of folate to white flour has been responsible for a dramatic drop in the rate of neural tube defects in infants since 1998. READ MORE