Mention Of Celiac In "women's Health" - Calls The Disease "trendy"

[hlm34]

my sister was reading "women's health" magazine (the sister mag to the popular "men's health") and came across "the best, the worst, and the spectacularly odd" stories of 2007. here's the piece on page 146 that made me so angry (copied word for word, including bolding the parts that the article bolded):

"The Gluten Glut: Suddenly, the stuff is everywhere - or rather, was. So what is gluten exactly? "It's one of the proteins found in wheat products," says Connie Shieh, R.D., of the Kaiser Permanente medical center. It's also an ingredient in soy sauce, stuffing, cookies, pizza crust, and even vitamins. "People who are sensitive to gluten lack the necessary enzymes to digest these parts of proteins; eating it can result in stomach upset, diarrhea, or even malnutrition," Shieh says. Yet the NIH estimates that full-blown celiac disease affects only 2 million Americans, or 1 in every 133 people. Whole Foods alone stocks more than 1,000 gluten-free products in this $700 million market! We know this much: Trendy conditions make our wallets itch."

You would think that a magazine that prides itself on health and the body would be a little more informed and sensitive than this. We would like write a letter to the editor to tell her what we think. If you have any thoughts or good information to include in the letter, please let me know!

[Mango04]

Ugh...that magazine is entertaining, but its information is always horrible (especially the nutrition stuff).

Does anyone else think that among the 1,000 gluten-free items at Whole Foods, you'll find grapes, chicken, carrots, rice, celery etc? It's not like they have 1,000 different gluten-free cake mixes .

That article makes it sound like non-celiacs are forced to buy expensive gluten-free foods....becuase we all know how incredibly hard it is to find regular, mainstream, gluten-filled products in a supermarket

[blueeyedmanda]

I can't find the article...I just wanted to read it.

[confused]

The full blown celiac part pisses me off.

paula

[Phyllis28]

You might want to include that, rye and barley, and oats also need to be eliminated from a gluten free diet. How about the fact that only 3% of people with celiac are diagnosed so about 1,940,000 are suffering and their long term health is at risk.

[blueeyedmanda]

Can someone post a link for me to view the article?

[stotlki]

here's the link to the article in the magazine - however, the blurb about celiac that my sister (hlm34)wrote about yesterday in the forum is not included in the on-line article version (several blurbs from the print article were omitted on the website).

Open Original Shared Link

yesterday, i emailed the celiac disease foundation and vanessa maltrin from the national foundation for celiac awareness asking them to write and call the editor of the magazine to more fully explain the disease and the severe complications that could develop if the disease is untreated. i heard back from vanessa this morning and she said that the she will definitely contact women's health magazine.

it's ridiculous to call this disease and it's accompanying diet trendy - would the magazine call the 1.5 million people who have a peanut allergy trendy diet followers?

[Firegirl43]

WOW How uninformed can someone be?

[kbtoyssni]

I wonder if this is partially in response to several articles this year that were along the lines of "having trouble losing weight? Then cut out gluten!" These articles were indirectly saying that if you have celiac you may have trouble losing weight, but they came across as a fad diet which, even if you don't have celiac, probably works because you eliminate so many foods. Those articles always annoyed me by downplaying the read medical problems that accompany celiac and just hype up the potential for weight loss. And for me, as I'm sure is true for many of you, too, weight loss was the least of my concerns when I was too sick to get out of bed. Articles like this are very unfair to true sufferers of the disease. I don't want people dismissing me as being on a fad diet.

I clicked on the link but didn't see the article either. Has it been removed???

[CMCM]

The unfortunate thing which will never get printed (at least, not in the near future) is that the evidence is mounting up that the human digestive system was not designed to process gluten.....obviously some people do better with it than others, and those with certain genes (celiac) suffer greatly, but the fact still remains that probably most if not all people should not eat gluten, period. There are other things people eat far too much of as well....sugar, high fructose corn syrup, foods fried in vegetable oils. But gluten grain foods are a major culprit in all this.

The companies that make all the foods using gluten ingredients will of course fight this concept tooth and nail as long as they can.

If everyone eliminated all gluten foods, how much of the indigestion, digestive upsets, headaches, heartburn, arthritis, heart disease, etc etc would start to disappear.....and then people wouldn't need all those drugs for these things......

[debmidge]

It's unfortunate that the dietitian used the word "trendy." Perhaps she meant it in the vein of "studies show that incidence of celiac disease are trending up." ? I can't imagine a R.D. even suggesting that gluten free is a optional trend when you have gluten intolerance (as the article goes onto mention this as a medical condition).

All in all, the magazine should print a correction/retraction and set it right. Maybe even do a better celiac disease article written by someone from University of Maryland, or any of the other hospitals who do celiac research. To me, that would correct any inaccurracies brought about from using "trendy" as a word.

[cellostix]

"The Gluten Glut: Suddenly, the stuff is everywhere - or rather, was. So what is gluten exactly? "It's one of the proteins found in wheat products," says Connie Shieh, R.D., of the Kaiser Permanente medical center. It's also an ingredient in soy sauce, stuffing, cookies, pizza crust, and even vitamins. "People who are sensitive to gluten lack the necessary enzymes to digest these parts of proteins; eating it can result in stomach upset, diarrhea, or even malnutrition," Shieh says. Yet the NIH estimates that full-blown celiac disease affects only 2 million Americans, or 1 in every 133 people. Whole Foods alone stocks more than 1,000 gluten-free products in this $700 million market! We know this much: Trendy conditions make our wallets itch."

I subscribe to this magazine, and I when I got this particular issue, I was PO'ed. To say the least.

A) The bit about "full-blown celiac disease" - as opposed to what? Me only throwing up eight times a day instead of throwing up and having diarrhea, too? Or do they mean just those people who go about their lives, dangerously anemic with all sorts of unknown lingering health issues below the surface?

And ONLY "1 in every 133" people?!?!? So every week at the office, I see "only" four patients with celiac who may or may not know it (I'm not a doc, I manage a neurosurg office)? Or last night at the movies, "only" 4 people in the audience had celiac disease? Many moons ago in my high school graduating class, there could have been 8 celiacs eating hamburgers in the caf? Or better yet, in the probably 200 or so staff at Women's Health, there are likely 2 or more people with celiac disease who may have NO IDEA they are sick. Even if they are looking at the relatively small percentage 1/133 is, they apparently were not taking into consideration the cause/effect factor of maintaining a gluten free diet and the various other health-related conditions that stem from or are often found in conjunction with celiac disease.

I'm not cancelling my subscription, but I sent them an e-novel (much more science-y and professional than this post, of course...) with plenty of references to sources they might want to use in their (hint hint people at Women's Health) upcoming feature on celiac disease. (Hint.)

[melrobsings]

um.....this magazine is crap...they have an article saying "blow jobs give you cancer of the mouth"......REALLY?! good lord!

The fad dieters I feel ruin it for us because they have no clue what gluten is ie: i was talking to a girl and she said on i'm wheat free and i ALWAYS ask oh so what is a typical meal for you and she answered "anything with soy sauce" and i said "um....that has wheat" and she said no it doesn't and i said yes, it's the 2nd ingredient! and she got mad at me....she came back and said "you are right!"

DUH I'M RIGHT IT MAKES ME SICK!