[8077628]

Wow, they're literally creating demand for a product that serves no purpose by "glutenizing" some harmless milk protein and selling "gluten-free" milk. Shameful.

And the irony is that milk has a component, lactose, that is legitimately indigestible for large numbers of people. It was gluten before gluten was gluten, except not BS! But products already exist for that, so they're glutenizing milk because, let's face it, a sucker is born every second and it ain't cheap sending kids to college these days.

Godspeed A2 milk, may the impoverishment of your customers reduce their propensity to procreate!

Preemptive edit: the stealth marketing is so so thick in this thread! Yuck!

[dang]

> Preemptive edit: the stealth marketing is so so thick in this thread! Yuck!

It breaks the HN guidelines to insinuate astroturfing unless you have evidence. Please don't do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

People having opposing views isn't evidence of 'stealth marketing', it's evidence that the community is big and, on most things, divided. Meanwhile the "astroturfer under every bed" trope is one of the toxins that poisons internet communities—if it doesn't kill, it causes brain damage. Therefore we all need to resist the temptation to go there, unless there's really evidence, in which case you should email us at [e-mail] so we can investigate and ban offenders.

[8077628]

Hopefully you guys are doing some due diligence, because there's no way for a user to have "evidence", no matter how canned and repetitive and glowing the comments above are. Obviously common sense doesn't cut the mustard here.

[dang]

We sure are. You can do some too, simply by looking at the account histories of the commenters you feel might be astroturfing.

Overwhelmingly the true hypothesis is the null one: people just disagree. The assumption that no one could possibly hold opinion X in good faith, so therefore they must be shilling, is imaginary. Such accusations in the threads are toxic, so we don't allow it unless there's some indication of more than imagination at work. This has been HN policy for years now and I've posted a ton about it: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

[code_duck]

The idea that it is nonsense to be avoiding gluten is harmful for people with celiac. I understand you are referring to the dietary fad, but some people have legitimate medical need to strictly avoid gluten.

It is possible that non-celiac gluten sensitivity is a real condition which merely has not been adequately researched yet. If it is real, it is a disservice to mock and be so opposed to people trying to conduct an elimination diet to discover their food intolerance.

As someone with celiac, the more people avoid gluten, the better for me, so I am biased. Currently the world is swimming in it and it’s very difficult to avoid.

[insaneirish]

> The idea that it is nonsense to be avoiding gluten is harmful for people with celiac.

More like: "The idea that it is generally beneficial to be avoiding gluten is harmful for people with celiac."

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend with a gluten allergy as confirmed by blood test and endoscopy. Obviously he should avoid gluten.

People who think that gluten "is bad" should keep their mouth shut or get an actual diagnosis showing it's actually bad for them.

Those without an actual allergy who make a fuss over it desensitize the food service industry, and people at large, to the severity of the problem in people with a legitimate allergy.

[zaroth]

I understand your concern, but in my experience this has not been the case. Many times I have been asked, “Allergy or Preference” and the level of care changes depending on the answer.

In my case my daughter has diagnosed celiac and we eat out quite a bit. The number of dietary options both out at restaurants as well as at the supermarket, the general level of education around what even is gluten, I believe has greatly benefited from non-celiac positive people preferring gluten-free food (for whatever cockamamie reason they may have).

If it was not a dietary trend I don’t think we would have nearly the number of options, and certainly not entire gluten free menus at restaurants available to choose from.

[code_duck]

NCGS has not been proven to be a real condition caused by gluten, and there is no test for it - but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I feel like it’s perfectly reasonable for people to do their own elimination diet to test for sensitivities, and others have no legitimate reason to not respect that. If someone don’t want something in their food, that’s my business and I’m not sure why that opens them to criticism.

When you try to be selective about your food, often there is struggle about it with others. While trying to debug my health, I was a vegetarian for years. For some reason many people are opposed to others being vegetarians or vegans, for reasons that seem too complex to analyze here. Importantly, though these diets have been proven to be healthy, but many people still act strongly opposed to others practicing them.

My experience at restaurants is that people are usually cool when I tell them I have a severe medical condition. However, I am so sensitive to gluten that I cannot eat at restaurants at all. Wheat is simply far too common, and they will never be ready for my level of sensitivity. The thing is, not all people with celiac are this sensitize or have symptoms they can notice. With people with mild or imaginary gluten conditions, food preparers can mess up significantly and the customer won’t come back and say ‘wow, you made me incredibly sick’ because they might not even have any ill effects. So, it essentially creates false negatives for their kitchen performance. Again, doesnt matter because I eat a strict medical diet and will never be able to eat at average restaurants.

One note, I realize you generally mean intolerance or sensitivity, but I have to point out celiac is not an allergy, it’s an automummune disease triggered by gluten.

Sorry it took me a few days to reply.

[Sniffnoy]

Clarification for those who haven't read the article: By "glutenizing" here, 8077628 is not referring to some physical process performed on the protein; rather he means demonizing it. By "gluten-free" milk, he does not mean milk that is actually gluten-free, but rather milk that lacks this particular protein, and thus has a property that is socially analogous to that of being gluten-free.

[sjwright]

I don't understand how your post relates to the article. I agree that the whole A2 thing is lacking evidence, but just because some people are buying the product for bad reasons (e.g. virtue or affluence signalling) doesn't mean it's all bad.

As I understand it, some cows produce milk with A1 protein and some cows produce milk with A2 protein. In normal milk these two types get mixed together indiscriminately. The A2 product is simply a matter of identifying the A2 cows and only using their milk.

Most people are not gluten intolerant. But a few people are. A nice side-effect of the gluten-free bullshit is that these legitimate sufferers have many more food options available to them in shops and cafes.

I sometimes order a gluten free brownie because it looks delicious. And sometimes I walk up the ramp that was intended for wheelchairs.

[8077628]

>just because some people are buying the product for bad reasons (e.g. virtue or affluence signalling) doesn't mean it's all bad

It's a mixed bag on the gluten free thing, with more availability of GF foods but the GF label not meaning crap to a real Celiac sufferer anymore.

But nobody has an a1 allergy. This is just making the fad without the medical condition existing at all. So in this case, no, there is no benefit, aside from redistributing wealth from the feebleminded to the "job creators". Some people think that's a good thing.

[chiefalchemist]

Are you saying that gluten is healthy? That it has no negative impact on the human body? That's contrary to the current science, is it not?

[JumpCrisscross]

> That's contrary to the current science, is it not?

No, for people without Celiac’s, NCGS, gluten ataxia or a wheat allergy gluten-free eating is a fad diet [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten-free_diet

[chiefalchemist]

Well...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23253599

And not that Huff Post is a health go-to (but nor is Wikipedia):

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1834836

[JumpCrisscross]

Mouse model study [1]. Intriguing, but far from meriting behaviour changes. Meanwhile, your Huffington Post author cites a largely-discredited glyphosate study [2] in the middle of an anti-GMO rant [3]. (Wikipedia is generally more reliable than the Huffington Post.)

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23253599

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Séralini_affair#Retraction

[3] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ask-jj-gmos_b_9547198.h...

[code_duck]

Isn’t the idea that these people have NCGS?

[sb8244]

I have no opinion on the gluten-free diet trend.

I believe that the popular opinion by many is that they do not have NCGS. TV personalities like Bourdain drive this heavily by discussing how gf used to not really be a thing in restaurants, but now is quite popular.

[ubernostrum]

The more recent research -- by the people who originally studied NCGS -- is that the earlier studies may have been detecting sensitivity to other things, and that NCGS may not exist at all.

[amluto]

I think there many people who think that gluten is evil but seitan is an amazing vegan food with wondrous health benefits. Given how the placebo effect works, it’s entirely possible that both are true in a bizarre sense :)

My personal belief is that a lot of “gluten intolerant” people derive considerable benefit from a low-gluten diet because many low-gluten diets have less starch.

(Hint: look up what seitan is.)