I have some sympathy with the disdain shown towards bandwagon-jumpers. However gluten has turned out to be a real problem in my own family. There seems to be a

I have some sympathy with the disdain shown towards bandwagon-jumpers. However gluten has turned out to be a real problem in my own family. There seems to be a range of problems that gluten sensitivity can be linked with, even while traditional coeliac tests return negative. Our own research suggests this can sometimes mean "not yet bad enough to show positive" and that things need to get really bad for that to finally register. There seems to be a term NCGS emerging - Non Coeliac Gluten Sensitivity. It's somewhat at the not-yet-proven-to-exist stage. For us though, we're in no doubt: given a regular gluten-containing morsel, my wife's face next day will show swelling and she'll be fatigued for days, plus be hit by abdominal cramps and various other things. Since she cut out gluten this has only ever happened "blind" btw, i.e. waking up with symptoms then figuring "ah that piece of XYZ must have had gluten" after the fact. She never eats gluten intentionally. It's been interesting - she was all set to go onto thyroid medication for life, and had really quite severe symptoms, sometimes requiring hospitalisation. Cutting out gluten fixed them all within weeks. We've seen it suggested that gluten proteins resemble thyroid molecules, hence the immune system's attack on gluten leading to those symptoms indicating thyroid dysfunction. It makes you wonder: how many people with low level health complaints could do better by just trying a gluten free diet for a couple of weeks.