Yesterday a friend started this posting on the Wine Spectator forums about this article from the New York Times. The article is about the growing level of food restrictions that guests are putting their hosts through in planning a dinner. I commented on the Forums thread and my favorite quote from the article was this:
“Like a lot of chefs, I’m convinced that these diets are not always the results
of the compromised immune systems of American diners, but their growing
infantilism and narcissism,” he said.
The conversation took an interesting turn though when another friend issued a challenge to everyone to try being gluten free and seeing what happens. I’m always up for a challenge. I especially like to learn about these food related fads. Stefania and I have to face the ‘sulfites or red wine gives me a headache’ one often. There’s no more powerful counter than the facts, and what we’ve found over the years is 100% (that means no one) of the people who have made that claim to us, self diagnosed and did it incorrectly.
They have known nothing about the causes of headaches from wine or alcohol and have attributed the cause incorrectly. That’s 100% of the time. Even people we’ve met who have legitimate issues with alcohol digestion have miss diagnosed themselves. One of my favorite sayings is that we have a ‘crisis of diagnosis’ in this country.
So I’m always up to learn more about these fads and self diagnosis. The friend who issues the challenge I know is not speaking from an amateur or uninformed position. I also know he’s in good health with a good diet, so the challenge interested me right away.
I can see how giving up gluten would be a huge benefit for most Americans because that really means giving up fast food, packaged snack food, and deep fried food. I don’t generally eat those things now though so our friends claim that even he felt better was interesting.
I’m starting July 5th, the 4th if I can manage it and will run for 21 days until the 26th. I’ll keep everyone up to date on how it goes.