Unless you have been living under a rock the last 5 years, the gluten free movement has produced massive shifts in product lines, menus, and people. Gluten, a protein, found in wheat has been around for thousands of years. How did it go from an essential food, in some areas of the world, to a eschewed substance of inflammation and disease?

Let us start first with facts: gluten allergies occur in less than 1% of the population. Those allergic can have skin rashes, intense gut pain, diarrhea, weight loss, and malnutrition. A researcher studying children in Belgium after World War II saw these findings in young kids after their country went from near famine to feasting on pounds of bread. Shortly after, the substance gluten was isolated and taken out of their diets to improve the kids' symptoms: it worked and so started the investigations that lead to celiac disease.

Celiacs disease is an inflammatory bowel disease due to gluten. The gold standard diagnostic test is a gut biopsy. Celiac...