Tuesday, 11/12

Sometimes I hafta chuckle and wonder if it's gone just a little too far.

You know how many foods now advertise themselves as “Gluten Free”? In some ways, it's a good thing. It allows people with Celiac disease—people who can't digest gluten, the protein found in wheat—to avoid the foods that cause them problems. That's a good thing. But only one percent of America's population has Celiac disease. For the other 99 percent of us, it doesn't matter if our food has gluten or not. But don't tell that to people who've been convinced that they shouldn't eat it.

And that's why you see so many things advertised as “Gluten Free”.

This all came to the fore when I discovered I was almost out of ibuprofen this past weekend. Since we were going to Meijer anyway, I picked up a bottle. When I opened it, I saw this--

That's right. My pain reliever is gluten free. Good to know.

Now, the only reason I'm ranting about this is that because there's no logic to it. I can understand why food is labeled as “gluten free”, at least for the one percent of people who can't physically handle gluten. I'm all for that. But I kinda hafta wonder if the mania over things being labeled “gluten free” has maybe, just maybe, gone a little overboard. Gluten comes from wheat. When you see something like medicine, which doesn't come from wheat, or a bottle of water, which last time I checked also doesn't come from wheat, being labeled gluten free, you kinda hafta wonder when the medical people stopped labeling things and the marketing people took over.

Really, you do.

It's funny; you can actually walk through a grocery store these days and laugh at everything labeled “gluten free”. I saw a box of tea labeled “gluten free”. I saw a bag of rice labeled “gluten free”. And aside from the bottle of water, I even saw a bag of salmon labeled “gluten free”. It makes no logical sense; if you know what gluten is, it's obvious none of those contain any sort of gluten. But because people have been told gluten is “bad”, without even knowing what it is, they'll make sure they buy products that don't contain it.

Even if those products, like bottled water, salmon, or my ibuprofen, wouldn't have a shred of gluten in it anyway. And more often than not? Those products cost just a little more than the exact same items NOT labeled “gluten free”.

Like I said, I'm not anti-gluten free. If you wanna buy gluten-free products, go ahead. Have at it. But just be aware that gluten comes from wheat. If a product didn't have wheat it in to begin with, it was naturally gluten free to start with. Just because it's labeled “gluten-free” doesn't mean it's anything special. It just means it doesn't have wheat in it. And if you're paying more for it just because it's “Gluten Free”, well...

That's all I'm gonna say about that.

(jim@wmqt.com), once again tilting at illogical windmills.