[pessimizer]

>She is now entirely gluten free (and has been for over a year), and is often irritated at people judging or questioning her gluten-free diet because they immediately assume it is nothing more than capitulation to an idiotic fad.

She shouldn't be, because 99 times out of 100, it is nothing more than that. It's a fine fad, though, because it doesn't harm the sensitive dears who have taken it up, and it brings a massive array of options for people whose diets were extremely limited before.

If somebody can come up with an anti-peanut dust fad, I'd support that too.

[yellowapple]

The issue, though, is when restaurants, grocers, etc. mistake a legitimate medical condition with a trendy fad diet and not take one's gluten-free requirements seriously (e.g. not paying attention to sources of gluten cross-contamination, or not paying attention to which ingredients actually have gluten). They should be erring on the safe side and assuming that all requests for gluten-free are due to a medical condition requiring it, but when the number of gluten-free fad dieters vastly exceeds the number of people who actually need a gluten-free diet, the likelihood of safe-side erring decreases without some other reason (like stronger requirements for "gluten-free" foods, including both ingredient and preparation standards).