Is Gluten-Free Diet Beneficial To Weight Loss?

Gluten-free, a word that most people don’t have any idea on what it is about. If you are too curious about your surroundings lately, you probably noticed the increasing number of gluten-free sections on your local store. Why is that?

Some people thought that gluten-free is some kind of fancy new fad diet, others view it as a more healthier alternative to gluten-packed products. Well, not quite!

What Gluten-Free Really Means?

According to MayoClinic, gluten-free is a type of diet that excludes the protein gluten. This protein is mostly found in grains such as barley, wheat, rye and triticale (a cross between wheat and rye).

People who undergo gluten-free diet are mostly under celiac disease treatment. Why? Because gluten causes inflammation in small intestines of people suffering from celiac disease.

So eating a gluten-free diet helps people to control symptoms, signs and prevents complications caused by celiac disease.

In recent years, the FDA has set standards for gluten-free labeling, so it greatly helps people with celiac disease.

Celiac disease is an auto-immune disorder where your immune system directly attacks your body. It is not the same as food allergy, like shellfish that involves the body’s anti-body attacking something that they deemed as an invader.

When a person with celiac disease consumes gluten, their immune system starts attacking intestinal villi that are responsible for absorbing nutrients from food.

Once this occur, your body goes degradation processes (physiological effects) due to lack of nutrients and your immune system continuously attacking your body. This can also halt development in children.

But for most people, gluten is actually not bad for you, nor is a product of any kind of food processing. So why is gluten hated so much?

So is Gluten-Free Diet Weight Loss Essential?

If you are unfamiliar with gluten-free living, there are plenty of resources on the Internet that can help you understand the real benefits of this diet.

But if you don’t need to live that way due to your auto-immune disease, choosing to follow a gluten-free diet won’t necessarily make you healthier.

For your information, at least seven percent of people with celiac disease in the world has gluten sensitivity. But many others are just piling on this “gluten-free” bandwagon thinking that it can help support or deliver weight loss.

Diet experts considers gluten-free diet as a fad simply because it encourages you to cut specific food groups in your diet. As you know, fad diet means avoiding or cutting out certain food groups.

So how do you lose weight? You can reduce weight by simply paying more attention to what you are putting into your body. This will be enough to trigger weight loss, and not by religiously following gluten-free diet.

Notice that people like to overeat grains and bread, so following a gluten-free diet means that you immediately cut back on grains.

But remember that gluten-free doesn’t mean “low-carb” that constitutes to weight loss, and it doesn’t really mean better health!

Plus, simply cutting out gluten on your diet can leave you highly deficient in iron, calcium, B vitamins and vitamin D. You are also depriving yourself of enough fiber on your diet, which is essential for good digestion and overall health.

Conclusion

Gluten-free diet option is clearly for people with celiac disease. So following a gluten-free living is not going to help you lose weight and may deprive you more of gluten’s essential health benefits.

If you are gluten sensitive person and you still want to get more vitamins and nutrients that gluten provides, then you can take gluten-free supplements. You can read a sample gluten-free dietary supplement at Popular Diet Pills.

So the word “free” doesn’t always mean that they are healthy, but it just mean safe to eat products. Talk to your doctor for more professional advise regarding gluten-free for weight loss.