4 ms·

Why are you convinced that gluten is bad for everyone?

• VLM 12y ago
  He might be exaggerating a bit. There are two ways to understand what he's saying: 1) If wheat wasn't part of white people food for many centuries, and as a thought experiment it was invented in 2014, there's no way possible that the FDA / USDA would approve it for human consumption and stick it on the GRAS list. In other words the only reason we tolerate it in a world that bans red M+M food coloring etc is because it got grandfathered in. Not because its good or good enough. 2) In processed foods its always an empty calorie or bulk-ing substance. You cannot remove wheat from your diet and die of "wheat-deficiency disease" like happens if you try to remove all Vitamin C from your diet. If starvation was a serious medical problem in America I'd say taking twinkies away from the skinnies would be a pretty dumb idea, but in a nation of people dying from being too fat, a dietary substance that has no redeeming value other than empty calories and making farmers and food processors wealthy is a pretty tempting target to imagine banning. Corn can/should pretty much just go away for similar reasoning. If as a hard sci fi novel you imagine space aliens or terrorists dropped a genetically engineered virus that wiped out corn and wheat, aside from short term shortages the only real effect is Americans would have a healthier weight and longer life. Not exactly a stellar endorsement for a foodstuff that its only real purpose is to make most of us fat and dead and a few of us wealthy.
  • sopooneo 12y ago
    What about wheat would make it so that the FDA would so likely not approve it? I ask in earnest and I expect there are a few things I don't know on the subject.