The growing number of celebs adopting a wheat free lifestyle
Celebrity crazes comes and go, they also have, but one that seems to have taken on a life of its own is the latest wheat free lifestyle that has been adopted by such whippet thin stars as Victoria Beckham, Miley Cyrus and Gwyneth Paltrow, and they can’t stop talking about it either.
It is easy to understand why, with their enviable figures, literally thousands of women are trying to follow their lead. The problem is, however, that giving up pasta, pizza, cakes and bread which contain gluten, the glue like protein found in barley, rye and wheat, isn’t as easy as they would have us believe, especially when you don’t have your own personal chef at your disposal to whip up healthy and tasty alternatives on demand.
The food industry, never one to miss a trick, has therefore spotted this burgeoning opportunity and we are seeing an ever expanding variety of products that are labelled ‘free from’. Walk into any UK supermarket and you will see that one aisle, at least, is packed with gluten free foods, ranging from fruity flapjacks to fusilli pasta. Even the good old sausage, traditionally bulked up with breadcrumbs, can now be bought by those wanting to cut gluten from their diets.
The upside of this is that those who suffer from coeliac’s disease, a physical intolerance to any items containing wheat, are now finding it a lot easier to find a wider range of products which certainly makes their life a lot easier.
These aren’t the only ones snapping them up however, as only 1% of the population suffers from coeliac’s, according to the Food Standards Agency, and this market is growing by around 15% a year and is now worth an estimated £238m annually. So what really is the truth behind this boom?
A paper recently appeared in the British Medical Journals where the authors suggested that this recent surge of interest in a gluten free lifestyle has come about because as well as coeliacs, these products are being bought by those who are watching their, or trying to lose, weight.
