Here’s Why A Gluten-Free Diet Can Become Incredibly Unhealthy

Hey everybody. Welcome to my weekly house call. Your chance to ask me your questions. And this week's question is. Dr. Hyman, I've recently gone gluten free and I've seen tons of replacements out there for traditionally gluten laden foods. Are any of these healthy? Well, everybody seems to be doing the gluten free thing, but that can be a disaster. I'm going to explain why in a minute. But a gluten free diet is the latest fad. Restaurants and grocery stores have entire menus and aisles dedicated to gluten free products. It's the new low fat right? Now, as a doctor treating sick people, I know that gluten is a major cause of digestive problems, autoimmune diseases, weight, mood problems, neurologic problems, and more. So I should be happy, right? But there are some real downsides to this gluten free craze. The biggest problem when we demonize a food substance is that it gives the food industry the chance to manipulate their franken foods by taking out that ingredient and then adding all this other stuff instead. So food companies turn their processed sugary junk into gluten free junk. They advertise foods as, quote, gluten free, implying that they're actually healthier for you. Just like we label foods fat free. And we all know what happened with that, right? A Coke is gluten free and it's fat free. Must be healthy, right? Here's my rule. If a food product has a health claim on the label, it's bad for you. Most food products labeled gluten free are often even worse for you. They're higher in sugar and even higher in high glycemic flours and weird food products. I often see patients who will switch from cupcakes and cookies to gluten free cupcakes and cookies and wonder why they aren't feeling better or can't lose weight. Well, I hate to break it to you, but gluten free cupcakes and cookies are still cake and cookies. In fact, a lot of these products are even worse than their counterparts. Why? Well, they're often filled with sugar and when you replace regular wheat flour with the gluten free flour, it often has a worse effect on your blood sugar than even wheat does, which is already pretty bad. Now, various forms of sugar and highly processed gluten flours are the most common ingredients used to replace gluten. And you know by now that sugar and flour are the main reasons we're sick and fat. So this is the root cause of our obesity. Epidemic. And it's the root cause of most of the chronic diseases that suck the life out of our citizens, our economy, and increasingly the rest of the world. You name it, it's caused by sugar, heart disease, cancer, dementia, which they now call type 3 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, depression, even acne, infertility and impotence, you name it. Next, gluten free foods are filled with other stuff. They're filled with preservatives and weird ingredients that are usually pretty nutrient deficient. Gluten free junk food is still junk food. You see, food companies add artificial sugars, food coloring, gums to make it stick together. When you take out the gluten, which is like glue, you have to put in other stuff. And these additives and these products are used to increase the shelf life. They used to make them stick together. But they can have serious health consequences, including things like leaky gut, which leads to more food allergies. Even things like brown rice flour or quinoa flour. They sound so healthy and good, but they're also really refined and they act like sugar in the body. Now, the whole kernel grains are okay, but not flours made from them. So stay away. You might as well just have a soda. And finally, gluten free products are often filled with a deadly fat, processed vegetable oils. Now these clear, tasteless, highly refined and highly processed oils include corn oil, soybean oil, canola, safflower, sunflower oil. They're really high in omega 6 fats. Now omega 6 fats trigger inflammation in the body and they block the availability of the anti inflammatory omega 3 fats. Things like from fish oil. We now have a huge imbalance in our diet between omega 6 fats and the omega 3 fats, which promotes all sorts of inflammatory diseases. And it's also linked to mental illness, including violent behavior, suicide, even homicide. So you want to stay away from these oils and that means staying away from the gluten free health foods or the junk foods. So what do I mean when I tell patients to eat a gluten free diet? It doesn't mean eating gluten free cookies or gluten free bread. Guess what? An avocado is gluten free. So are almonds. Just eat real whole food. And the best way to do that is cook at home. You see, the cure for what ails us both in our bodies and in our country, in our nation, our world really can be found in our kitchen. You see, the industrial food system has created hundreds of thousands of food like substances, not real food, that have literally invaded Our biochemistry creating hunger, obesity and disease. Your taste buds get hijacked, your metabolism spins out of control, and your brain gets addicted to these slick combinations of sugar, salt and fat that are pumped into these factory made foods. But your biochemistry just cannot handle these foods. You see, we're brainwashed into thinking that cooking real food costs too much, it's too hard, it takes too long. So we rely on inexpensive, quote, convenient foods or convenience foods. But these aren't so convenient when we become sick and have to take all these medications. The research has shown that eating real food doesn't have to be more expensive or take longer to make. So the best way to ensure we're getting real good nutrition, proper nutrition, is to make our own food. Use fruits and vegetables, use grass fed organic meats if you can, but just eating real food is a huge upgrade. Eat healthy fats. Include whole grains, not flours, right, the whole grain kernel, if you can tolerate them. Also check out the environmental working Group's guide called Good Food on a Tight Budget, which is how to eat food that's good for you, good for your wallet and good for the planet. So I want you to ask yourself, how many steps did it take to get this food that's on your plate from the farm to your fork? If it took a pit stop at a factory or if it was made in a factory, I'd avoid it. Michael Pollan said, if it was grown on a plant, eat it. But if it was made in a plant, don't eat it. You see, naturally gluten free foods don't come in a box and they certainly don't have a ton of weird ingredients in them. Next, if you eat out, try to choose a restaurant that you pick yourself so you can pick the best quality with the most options. Gluten free menus are great, but again, you don't want to replace one bread or pasta with an even worse form of bread or pasta based on its effect on your blood sugar and all those weird ingredients. So find the chicken or the fish or the grass fed meat or other protein and pair it with a couple of vegetables. I often order two or three sides of veggies and good fats like avocados and extra virgin olive oil. Bottom line, don't let the food industry trick you. If you see a health claim on the label, be very suspicious. Remember, the front of the label is food marketing at its cleverest. It's designed to seduce you into an emotional purchase and then trick you with misleading claims. So look for high quality ingredients. If the real food in it is at the end of the list of ingredients and sugars or other ingredients you don't recognize are at the top of the list. Beware because the most abundant ingredient is listed first and then the others are listed in descending order by weight. Now if you see any words on the label that you can't pronounce, if it's in Latin, if you wouldn't find it in your cabinet at home where you're cooking in your pantry, then I would avoid it, right? Before you analyze the numbers on a label, ask yourself if this food could have been eaten by your great grandmother at her dinner table. I bet she served only real food. In fact, your great grandmother only ate local grass fed, organic, non GMO food because that's all there was, right? The best advice is to avoid foods with health claims on the label. Or better yet, avoid foods with labels in the first place. So yeah, gluten free diets can be a powerful way to reduce inflammation, to improve your gut function, to lose weight, to even improve your mood and your energy. But only if you eat whole real food, not gluten free junk food food like fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and clean animal foods and whole gluten free grains and beans. That is what you should be eating as a gluten free diet. Now I want to hear from you what's been your experience with going gluten free? Share your comments below or on my Facebook page. And if you like this video, please share it on your social media and be sure to submit your questions to drhyman.com and maybe next week I'll make a house call to you.