Is there any way to avoid hidden animal products?

[Themrys]

You outline the reason people feel bad in your post, though don't seem to realize it. People don't like to be judged. If they think you're judging them, they will be uncomfortable.

The thing is that I am not judging them. I just outlined above that it is almost impossible to completely avoid animal suffering, anyway, and that I am not a very strict vegetarian.

I am also not really that strict about not drinking alcohol, I have just taken to pretending that I am very strict about it exactly because people will try to talk you into drinking too much if you don't discourage them by telling them you won't drink even a drop of alcohol. (I also hate the taste of it, but I still did drink alcohol when I was younger and wanted to be polite to people who offered it. Then I realized that got me on the slippery slope of social pressure and refused entirely)

Believe me, I have seen it happen. Perhaps I shouldn't have let it happen, but I didn't want to be - oh irony - seen as being judgemental, so I let someone talk a friend into getting drunk, which in turn led to slightly embarrassing behaviour that was regretted in the morning.

People frequently manage to THINK that someone is judging them who in reality couldn't care less about their eating habits.

Keep in mind that non-vegetarians are the majority of the population. They have no reason to fear that their lifestyle is actually threatened. They also have no reason to assume that every random vegetarian they meet is judging them.


Not saying I don't judge people. But they are usually completely mistaken about what I judge them for. Much to my disappointment, people who do things that I really find morally reprehensible don't even seem to worry that I might judge them for it.
On the other hand, that's rather useful, because no man who wanted to get into my pants has ever been able to successfully pretend to be the kind of man I'd like. (There have been some hilarious unsuccessful attempts, though. Picture Roy imagining Miko would be impressed by his being mistaken for a king.)

What people think they are being judged for and what they are actually being judged for doesn't necessarily have much to do with each other.


@BrotherOni: Plant protein products that look like meat products are vegetarian, but actual meat that is somehow produced without cruelty to animals is still meat. Some vegetarians would no doubt eat it, but that wouldn't make it a vegetarian product.
Sure, most vegetarians are vegetarians because they don't want to harm animals, but that's not the definition of the word. The definition is "a person who doesn't eat meat". It could just as well be for health reasons or because they just don't like the taste. I think everyone would agree that a meal that is advertised as vegetarian shouldn't contain any meat whatsoever.

[Razade]

As an allergy sufferer, I confess that my sole reasoning for consuming any amount of plant matter is bitter and spiteful revenge. I chew slowly. I eat animals 'cause they taste good. I drink alcohol because I hate myself.

Animals do indeed taste good. They taste better when paired with vegetables and alcohol. You know what they say. Alcohol is a liquid and liquids can fill any empty space. A bottle. A Barrel. An empty heart.

[warty goblin]

The only vegetarians I've ever been annoyed by are the Stealth Vegetarians I used to encounter when catering for weddings. Most weddings run off a limited menu, with pre-registered orders, so the kitchen staff can get the entire meal prepped for extremely rapid deployment, and the waitstaff can run trays with the exact food for each table. Vegetarians are absolutely not a problem in this system. People who see their neighbor's vegetarian pasta and decide they'd rather have that then the pork loin they ordered three months ago are an enormous pain to deal with, particularly since these special individuals tend to cluster. Since the waitstaff load trays by table, and the cooks probably don't produce a spare vat of vegetarian food, at the very least the carefully prepped logistics get gummed up, and at the worst somebody ends up trying to make a couple extra pastas on like three minutes notice.

These days I'm almost purely vegetarian when left to my own devices. What I find continually interesting is people who happily eat meat by the bucket, but react strongly to even a vague description of slaughtering an animal. Seems to me there's a sort of fundamental dissonance there. I've slaughtered animals, it's fine. Not my favorite job, but not super-unpleasant either. I'd certainly feel very strange eating meat at all if I couldn't tolerate the deed, let alone the concept of the deed.

[MonkeySage]

I feel like I should have left it at "how do I avoid animal products", without mentioning any stigma. ^_^ I didn't think it'd spark a debate, and while I love a good debate, I just hope it stays friendly, lol.

But yeah... I had a feeling some of the worst offenders might be difficult to avoid because they're hidden behind a "natural flavors" label. Easy enough for me to avoid normally... I've made gelato by hand before. :3

Trouble is, I can't cook worth a damn (I've managed to burn water...), so that's the main reason I go for the easy route, lol.

[Evil DM Mark3]

I suspect many meat eaters secretly feel bad about their choices and resent people who have the strength to make different ones.

The thing is that I am not judging them.

No, you are.

Stating that you feel that a large number of a group feel bad for being members of that group due to their own lack of "strength" isn't being judgemental?

Imagine if the comment had been "I suspect many console gamers secretly feel bad about their choices and resent people who have the attention span to play better games" or "I suspect many audiobook listeners secretly feel bad about their choices and resent people who have the intellect to read properly". The speaker would be rightly considered a PC master-racer or book snob and be considered judgemental in their dismissal of the other group.

[Brother Oni]

@BrotherOni: Plant protein products that look like meat products are vegetarian, but actual meat that is somehow produced without cruelty to animals is still meat. Some vegetarians would no doubt eat it, but that wouldn't make it a vegetarian product.
Sure, most vegetarians are vegetarians because they don't want to harm animals, but that's not the definition of the word. The definition is "a person who doesn't eat meat". It could just as well be for health reasons or because they just don't like the taste. I think everyone would agree that a meal that is advertised as vegetarian shouldn't contain any meat whatsoever.

I was thinking more 'laser printed steak' or 'vat grown flesh' rendered/generated from micro-organisms (e.g. prokaryotes like bacteria, archaea), rather than textured plant/myco protein like soya or Quorn products.

I would agree with you that a meal advertised as vegetarian shouldn't intentionally have any meat in it.

[Evil DM Mark3]

On the subject of synthetic meat, I seem to recall their potential Kosher/Halal status was a plot point on Elementary.

[darkrose50]

Oh some people do not even believe me when I tell them that I am gluten intolerant . . . like it is some made-up thing.

I mean if someone told you that when they ate X they did not digest it properly, would your response be "no, your making that up, everyone can digest everything equally" . . . nope, because most sane folks would be like "okay, that's a thing", and move on.

People are often idjits. Especially if it is new-ish thing that did not occur (as much) when they were younger. Oh the number of times I have to tell people that it was not safer when they were younger because science, technology and cameras are things that are better and more widespread than back in the day (and propaganda and/or news stories pushing dangerous stories are a newer thing).

Even today most murders are not solved, and back in the day even more murders were not solved.

[Evil DM Mark3]

I understand your frustration, my sister has Celiac disease and gluten gets everywhere.

[snowblizz]

Oh some people do not even believe me when I tell them that I am gluten intolerant . . . like it is some made-up thing.

Because, unbelievably as it may be, there are people who de facto make their food allergies up. Most don't specifically do it, shall we misuse the word maliciously, but due to psychosomatic or actual unexplored food issues.
The husband of colleague of mine was for the longest time gluten or lactose intolerant (I forget which), and the reason I say "was" is because when eventually clinically explored turned out to be mostly unknown (at least around these parts) intolerance towards some components of amongst others, onions. Another colleague of mine would have major issues from various types of foods that could not be nailed down in any scientific way.

Similarly the 2 lactose intolerant people in my circle of family and friends, were people who would be miraculously cured the second they sat foot outside the country espousing various excuses of "well it's not processed as hard here" when in fact the ice cream you couldn't eat at home was actually made in Germany or Holland or France and should by that logic be perfectly fine. I won't even dig into the husband of my godmother whose food allergies vary based on what his wife tells him they are.

So yes I tend to be sceptical of various dietary issues people suddenly adopt.

I mean if someone told you that when they ate X they did not digest it properly, would your response be "no, your making that up, everyone can digest everything equally" . . . nope, because most sane folks would be like "okay, that's a thing", and move on.

No, my question would be are you really gluten intolerant or is that just a lifestyle choice? Because so far the score is 4/10. Well not out loud, but in my head.
There are currently a massive wave of people suffering imaginary dietary issues that various, more expensive and heavily marketed, foodstuffs fix. There's a certain "fashion aspect" to the phenomenon. I guess the small minority actually suffering do have a lot more options though, silver lining.

Not that I generally care much except when they start making a nuisance of it.

[Imbalance]

From what I remember reading somewhere, the rise in gluten allergies may have a great deal less to do with an increase in human sensitivity than it does a tremendous increase in the amount of gluten in our GMO wheat. Farmers wanted heartier crops, so science bred out those amber waves of grain in favor of Round-up readiness and a short, woody stalk to hold up massive kernels. The correlation isn't proven, of course (pending litigation in some high-profile cases you may have heard of if you skim the news), but I went searching for conspiracy and kept turning up progress-in-the-name-of-agriculture and good old-fashioned industrial greed.

The science isn't hidden, but rather bragged about in publications that focus on ag. Selective breeding is as ancient as farming itself. What's newer is the massive scale, and the numbers reveal just how successful the practices have been at reducing disease and making crops and livestock with better yields over generations. The downside that we are only beginning to understand (and what big players in the industry seem keen to avoid acknowledging) is the long term effect these practices have on our food supply and us, by extension. "You are what you eat," they say, and what we may be becoming is a soup of residual hormone injections and herbicides.

[Willie the Duck]

There have been a lot of food scares and food fads and health fads out there muddying the waters. Remember when everyone was up in arms about cholesterol instead of fat, or MSG instead of gluten, or when the great bugaboo of diet colas was cancer and not glycemic response? Or heck, every time coffee switches between being good or bad for you? 'Gluten free' seems to be caught in a general backlash of distrust in a treadmill of in vogue things to consider the worst things to eat.

I think gluten-free has specifically gotten such a backlash because 1) you absolutely can still make a glutenous product without gluten (as opposed to, say, vegetarian, where you just have a vegetarian option alongside the meat), but it's challenging, and 2) many-to-most people do know someone who quit gluten for a while, and now is back on. It didn't help that a number of studies came out and stated that people that thought they were gluten intolerant were probably technically not.

None of which means that thinking that someone who finds eating XYZ a digestive problem is probably 'making it up' make any more sense. Different people have different reactions to different foods. Or different people at different ages. I'd hate to think what my body would do to the greasy spoon breakfasts I use to eat in my 20s.

[darkrose50]

Yes when something becomes popular you get all the flack for it being popular. This is both good and bad. Good because there are more options to eat, and bad because people think that you can digest things that you cannot.

For example, I listened to my idiot (ex) doctor, ate some wheat, and was sick for weeks. She told me that I tested negative for celiac disease, ergo I could eat wheat. I was like cool-beans doc, off I go to eat some REAL pizza (and cookies and brownies)! I was an idiot, listed to my doctor, and suffered for it. I cannot eat much wheat without it effecting my digestion and/or my mind (gluten does not play well with autism). Seriously wheat-packed brownies would be the food that I would like to eat for-ever-and-a-day, but I just cannot do it without feeling like crap afterword's . . . sometimes for weeks.

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Theoretically one can get over an intolerance. Brace yourselves . . . fecal microbiota transplant . . . is a thing (enema, or frozen in a capsule).

Also enzymes. One can take an enzyme supplement (one that you do not adequately poses) and eventually grow your own.

Likely what often occurs is that someone gets sick, takes an antibiotic (or whatnot), and looses enough of a population of the little guys in the gut that break this or that down. So you can go from being able to digest something, to not, and back again.

Also folks age and loose the ability to digest something as well as they did when they were younger. Some due to age, and some likely due to taking medications that mess with your gut fauna and flora.

[Brother Oni]

Similarly the 2 lactose intolerant people in my circle of family and friends, were people who would be miraculously cured the second they sat foot outside the country espousing various excuses of "well it's not processed as hard here" when in fact the ice cream you couldn't eat at home was actually made in Germany or Holland or France and should by that logic be perfectly fine. I won't even dig into the husband of my godmother whose food allergies vary based on what his wife tells him they are.

So yes I tend to be sceptical of various dietary issues people suddenly adopt.

It also depends on how much a person lets dietary restrictions rule their lives.

As an example, I'm moderately lactose/dairy intolerant* and if I'm traveling, I refuse to touch the stuff. If I'm at home or at work, I'll sneak some chocolate or a slice of pizza and sit in a well ventilated spot for the couple hours since I know where the toilets are.

*I haven't quite pinned it down as it apparently varies depending on what I eat: milk and cream have their full effect; reduced lactose milk and yogurt have a mild to moderate effect; whey derived protein powder is particularly bad; cheese depends - goat's cheese has its full effect, while takeout pizza is ok but homemade pizza is not so good.
I should really sneak some pharmaceutical grade lactose from work and see if that sets me off to put the matter to bed, but trying to do that without triggering a misconduct charge might be tricky.

[Gnoman]

From what I remember reading somewhere, the rise in gluten allergies may have a great deal less to do with an increase in human sensitivity than it does a tremendous increase in the amount of gluten in our GMO wheat. Farmers wanted heartier crops, so science bred out those amber waves of grain in favor of Round-up readiness and a short, woody stalk to hold up massive kernels. The correlation isn't proven, of course (pending litigation in some high-profile cases you may have heard of if you skim the news), but I went searching for conspiracy and kept turning up progress-in-the-name-of-agriculture and good old-fashioned industrial greed.

The science isn't hidden, but rather bragged about in publications that focus on ag. Selective breeding is as ancient as farming itself. What's newer is the massive scale, and the numbers reveal just how successful the practices have been at reducing disease and making crops and livestock with better yields over generations. The downside that we are only beginning to understand (and what big players in the industry seem keen to avoid acknowledging) is the long term effect these practices have on our food supply and us, by extension. "You are what you eat," they say, and what we may be becoming is a soup of residual hormone injections and herbicides.

That doesn't make any sense. Baking is an extremely gluten-dependent process, and any change in gluten levels will result in an entirely different (and usually inedible) product unless a deliberate and careful effort is made to prevent this by altering other ingredients and/or ratios. This is why extra-gluten flours exist - some baked goods can not be made properly with ordinary flour.


This is the primary reason why gluten-free products that are not considerably inferior to the conventional variety are a relatively recent phenomenon. Food scientists took a long time to compensate for the extreme difficulty of baking without the stuff.

[darkrose50]

From what I recall gluten basically makes bread settle faster. Faster settling bread equal more profit. So a bread manufacturer can make more bread, in the same space, faster.

From what I understand the new-fangled gluten bread (well the wheat) has a lot more gluten as a result than it once did.

[AMFV]

From what I recall gluten basically makes bread settle faster. Faster settling bread equal more profit. So a bread manufacturer can make more bread, in the same space, faster.

From what I understand the new-fangled gluten bread (well the wheat) has a lot more gluten as a result than it once did.

You can't just add more gluten and then get the same result faster though. It doesn't work that way.

[Imbalance]

It's not just baking - gluten is used in everything from luncheon meats to vodka, lipstick and Play-doh, it's the G in MSG. It's easy to find entire lists of not only the relevant grain sources, but also all of the products it is used in and what the processed form of it is called. The crops being better makes it more readily available to use in more products, not just your bread or whatever.

[Xuc Xac]

Oh some people do not even believe me when I tell them that I am gluten intolerant . . . like it is some made-up thing.

The next time you go out to eat at a restaurant with gluten free menu options, ask your server "How many times have you seen someone insist on a gluten free meal and then drink beer and eat all the bread on the table?"

A lot of people don't even know what gluten is and aren't bothered by it, but they think "gluten free" food is somehow superior and being gluten free is cool. These are the same type of people that buy "fat free" sugar and "zero carb" water. If diabetes has just been discovered last month, they would be ordering sugar free drinks for their "diabetes" while enjoying a big bowl of ice cream.

[Xuc Xac]

It's not just baking - gluten is used in everything from luncheon meats to vodka, lipstick and Play-doh, it's the G in MSG.

MSG is monosodium glutamate, a salt of glutamic acid. It's not related to gluten, which is a mixture of proteins.

[warty goblin]

From what I recall gluten basically makes bread settle faster. Faster settling bread equal more profit. So a bread manufacturer can make more bread, in the same space, faster.

From what I understand the new-fangled gluten bread (well the wheat) has a lot more gluten as a result than it once did.

A few points. Gluten content isn't really associated with speed of bread production. Gluten, when worked through kneading, makes the dough sturdy enough that it traps the CO2 emitted by yeast as it digests the carbohydrates in the flour. Increasing the gluten content of the flour doesn't allow the bread to rise faster - that's determined by how fast the yeast metabolizes and reproduces which is mostly determined by temperature and flour weight/texture - it allows a larger, airier loaf.

Also, it's well established * that gluten content has not been increasing over the last hundred plus years. Nor are there are any GMO wheat varieties grown commercially in the US; which wouldn't matter anyway because gluten is a protein and it doesn't matter if the genes that code for its production come from wheat or cuttlefish**.


*Does not unfortunately present protein content of wheat in a tabular form. However it's easy enough to text search "protein" and cycle through years, which reveals that the protein content varies between about 9% and 14%, with most years coming in the high 11% to low 12% range. Also looking through NASS crop reports is giving me grad school flashbacks.


**I have no evidence that cuttlefish can, or cannot, synthesize gluten. Though if they could, I'd definitely try cuttlefish bread: clearly the most Lovecraftian on the market. If the stars are right, your loaf will take on blasphemous geometries, for what is dead may never die, and with strange eons, even death is delicious with 10% rye.

[Imbalance]

MSG is monosodium glutamate, a salt of glutamic acid. It's not related to gluten, which is a mixture of proteins.

I stand corrected. It's been years since I looked into all of it, so I had better bow out before my faulty memory conjures further error. I stand by the point I was trying to make, though.

[Bohandas]

The only way to safely avoid hidden animal products is to only buy unprocessed foods.

Or buy foods that are so heavily processed that they have no natural flavors or similar umbrella terms at all, just specific chemicals and processed ingredients. Oreos are vegan*. They're basically just straight high-fructose corn syrup with a handful of plant-based binding agents to make it solid.


*(or the oreo recipe is vegan at any rate; IIRC they may contain trace amounts of milk since they're made in facilities that also produce non-vegan foods)

The next time you go out to eat at a restaurant with gluten free menu options, ask your server "How many times have you seen someone insist on a gluten free meal and then drink beer and eat all the bread on the table?"

A lot of people don't even know what gluten is and aren't bothered by it, but they think "gluten free" food is somehow superior and being gluten free is cool. These are the same type of people that buy "fat free" sugar and "zero carb" water. If diabetes has just been discovered last month, they would be ordering sugar free drinks for their "diabetes" while enjoying a big bowl of ice cream.

The newest trend of this type seems to be people going on ketogenic diets despite not having epilepsy. This trend also seems to be associated with a growing market for food products which can only be described as "diet fat"

[Brother Oni]

The newest trend of this type seems to be people going on ketogenic diets despite not having epilepsy. This trend also seems to be associated with a growing market for food products which can only be described as "diet fat"

Bodybuilders and figure models also use ketogenic diets in order to reduce their body fat percentage for competitions. They're also prescribed to overweight people by doctors and dietitians as part of a weight control regimes.

Ketogenic diets are just low carbohydrate diets to trigger preferential fat usage - it's not as if they've been designed for epilepsy treatments and have been co-opted by fad dieters.

[warty goblin]

To be clear, the reason restaurants are annoyed by people passing off a preference as a food allergy is that a food allergy requires a lot more work from the kitchen. If you just want a hamburger patty with no bun, that's easy. If you want it because gluten makes you sick, we need to scrub down all the work surfaces that your meal could come into contact with, and make sure they stay clean until that order is out the door. That requires coordination with every other order currently up. That's five minutes extra work, easy. Which is totally fine if you need that, but otherwise means you've wasted our time and complicated every other order we're working on.

The other reason is that people will use an allergy (real or otherwise) to treat the menu less as a menu and more of an ingredient list. The menu is not an ingredient list, it's what we are prepped, set up, and trained to make.

[Razade]

To be clear, the reason restaurants are annoyed by people passing off a preference as a food allergy is that a food allergy requires a lot more work from the kitchen. If you just want a hamburger patty with no bun, that's easy. If you want it because gluten makes you sick, we need to scrub down all the work surfaces that your meal could come into contact with, and make sure they stay clean until that order is out the door. That requires coordination with every other order currently up. That's five minutes extra work, easy. Which is totally fine if you need that, but otherwise means you've wasted our time and complicated every other order we're working on.

The other reason is that people will use an allergy (real or otherwise) to treat the menu less as a menu and more of an ingredient list. The menu is not an ingredient list, it's what we are prepped, set up, and trained to make.

As a kitchen worker, this like 10000000%.

We get people who come in all the time and say they're allergic to pickles. Except then they order a burger sauce, which has relish in it, and eat it with no ill effects. It takes a considerable amount of time to work with food allergies. We do it because it's important obviously but it's time we have to spend concentrated on not murdering someone rather than keeping food moving to the customers. It's not like a kitchen will tell you no in most places if you just say you don't like something. You're the customer. We want to make you happy because if we don't you won't pay us. We'll make the food you want, the way you want us to as best we can.

[darkrose50]

You can't just add more gluten and then get the same result faster though. It doesn't work that way.

I am not sure why that stuck out at me. I think that was from a news story on the topic I watched. It could be that increased gluten was a side-effect.

A doctor/scientist mentioned in this article seems to think "That didn't mean gluten itself was causing disease, but the finding hinted that the barrier of those patients' intestines might be defective, allowing partially digested gluten to get out of the gut and interact with immune cells in the blood."

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018...en-sensitivity

Perhaps it is like saying X does not cause Y, except when it combines with Z. So gluten may not effect people, or those with autism, in general. But it might effect some people with a combination of things. Like red food coloring does not cause hyperactivity, except that red food coloring totally causes me to bounce off the walls.

I am not sure why but gluten somehow effects me in several negative ways. I was having issues with an inflamed prostate. Then I went to a weekend of tournaments, and basically only drank Ensure (a quick, easy, lazy meal). All the issues went away. I figured that (a) Ensure is good for the prostate (all the old man vitamins must be good), and (b) perhaps not eating wheat helped. For whatever reason when I cut wheat out I do not have issues with my prostate. I also have a substantial reduction in gestational issues (diarrhea, constipation, gas, bloating) when I do not eat wheat.

I am going to see another dietician soon-ish. I saw one a few years ago, but he basically told me that he helped folks loose weight, and did not know anything (enough?) about gluten to help me.

-----

"Studies have shown that people with an intolerance to gluten are able to consume gluten containing Ancient-grains because they are not as processed as today’s wheat. Today’s wheat is one of the most processed crops. With such high demand for wheat, farmers are genetically modifying and using pesticides to produce a stronger and more cost effective crop. Some of these chemicals used on wheat may be the reason for a rise in food intolerances." https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018...en-sensitivity

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"It could be another protein in wheat," he says. "It could also be that once you remove gluten, you're also removing a number of other carbohydrates that are hard to digest. So you eliminate them and that makes you feel better." https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt...celiac-disease

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As a kitchen worker, this like 10000000%.

When I order rice noodles I need to tell them that it is not due to a gluten allergy, or they will want to cook them separately. I would not call what I have an allergy, but perhaps it is. I am allergic to cats, and it is nothing like that in the least.

-----

No, my question would be are you really gluten intolerant or is that just a lifestyle choice? Because so far the score is 4/10. Well not out loud, but in my head.

There are currently a massive wave of people suffering imaginary dietary issues that various, more expensive and heavily marketed, foodstuffs fix. There's a certain "fashion aspect" to the phenomenon. I guess the small minority actually suffering do have a lot more options though, silver lining.

Not that I generally care much except when they start making a nuisance of it.

If one of your friends moved from the sick towards the healthy side by not eating wheat, then you might also think that it could work for you, even if you do not have any issues with gluten.

[ve4grm]

"Studies have shown that people with an intolerance to gluten are able to consume gluten containing Ancient-grains because they are not as processed as today’s wheat. Today’s wheat is one of the most processed crops. With such high demand for wheat, farmers are genetically modifying and using pesticides to produce a stronger and more cost effective crop. Some of these chemicals used on wheat may be the reason for a rise in food intolerances." https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018...en-sensitivity

Right, so that quote doesn't seem to be in that article? Perhaps it's in the video, I didn't watch it, but I'm confused as the article isn't saying that at all. It's in fact saying that gluten itself may not even be causing non-celiac gluten sensitivity.

The ancient grains thing also seems wrong, as the name Celiac Disease is actually a translation from ancient greek, where it was first recorded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeliac_disease#History
I don't know about just gluten intolerance (as they have different causes) but Celiac is possibly as old as cultivated grain is. That is for celiac itself, of course, and not necessarily gluten intolerance, but still.

EDIT: The correct link for the above quote is here: https://firstdescents.org/fd-healthy-gluten-guide/
This site is a non-medical page, from a group that seems to be trying to heal cancer with... adventure? (Providing opportunities to be something other than "a cancer patient" to those with cancer is an admirable goal, but they're still not a medical source.)
I'm not sure I'd trust their medical conclusions over actual studies, unless you find the studies they're referring to, which they don't cite.

That said, yes some grains have less gluten in them. Or none, perhaps. But it's not the processing that gives it the gluten. Raw wheat has just as much gluten as any modern, processed wheat flour.

[warty goblin]

If one of your friends moved from the sick towards the healthy side by not eating wheat, then you might also think that it could work for you, even if you do not have any issues with gluten.

An important point to remember with all medical "my cousin did the one weird thing and got better" stories is that people move from states of vague illness to health and back all the time. One person doing this at the same time they also changed diets is an interesting anecdote, but that's it. By the time you add in the effects of other dietary changes (what else did they stop eating at the same time? did they change the amount or frequency they eat?) the general unreliability of self-report data and the tremendous power of the placebo effect and it's worth as actual, actionable data is zero.

This is why we have randomized trials. Generally I treat information, particularly dietary information, that does not come bearing random trials data or at least some form of vaguely principled retrospective analysis of actual data with extreme skepticism. It's possible they're onto something real. It's also possible that they're trying to convince me to spend more money. Given that these things cycle in and out of vogue every 3-5 years, I have a fairly strong prior belief that it's the latter.

[Bohandas]

I still say the OP should stick to Oreos and those two Doritos flavors that don't have cheese in them (Sweet Spicy Chili and Toasted Corn IIRC)

EDIT:
Yeah, here we go: https://veganfoodlover.com/are-doritos-vegan/

As a kitchen worker, this like 10000000%.

We get people who come in all the time and say they're allergic to pickles. Except then they order a burger sauce, which has relish in it, and eat it with no ill effects.

That said, some people who really do have allergies play fast and loose with the doctor's orders.

I had a guy at my job who used to insist that his nut allergy was only dangerous if he had a lot of them. In his defense he was well enough to drive himself to the doctor's office rather than taking an ambulance.