Gluten Panic
How Wellness Grifters Hijacked a Real Disease
“Gluten-free” has exploded into a multi-billion-dollar health trend. On wellness blogs, gluten is framed as a silent, invisible toxin. Somewhere along the way, gluten stopped being a medical issue and became a moral one.
A major driver of this panic has been figures like Dr. Mark Hyman. According to Hyman, gluten isn’t just a problem for the one percent of people with celiac disease, it’s a danger to nearly everyone, causing everything from fatigue to cancer to death.
It’s an alarming story. It’s also a badly distorted one.
There’s a tiny grain of truth to it, in that gluten is a genuine threat for some people out there. But for most, it’s a scapegoat for deeper problems. Today, I’ll dispassionately separate the real science from the marketing, the real disease and how the reality is nowhere close to what the wellness myths claim, and how these wellness grifters manufacture fear.
What is Celiac Disease?
Before we get to the wellness mythology that turned gluten into a boogeyman, it’s worth taking the time to understand a bit about the real disease that started all of this. Celiac disease is an autoimmune condition, meaning the immune system misfires and attacks healthy cells. When someone with celiac eats a food containing gluten (the protein found in wheat, barley, and rye) their immune system begins attacking the lining of the small intestine instead of leaving it alone. Specifically, the tiny projections that absorb nutrients called villi get inflamed and end up flattened1. In turn, this wrecks nutrient absorption capacity.
Over time, these effects can spiral into iron deficiency, calcium and vitamin D problems, anemia, osteoporosis, infertility, and in some cases, even intestinal cancers1. For patients, celiac isn’t just about having stomachaches after bread every so often. This is a full-body disease, triggered even by small traces of gluten, with consequences that go way beyond the gut.
The symptoms inevitably vary from person to person with diarrhea, constipation, brain fog, rashes, and even migraines being some of the most common. A combination of sometimes vague-seeming symptoms that is part of why the disease is underdiagnosed.
But the mechanism is consistent: immune dysfunction triggered by gluten exposure. Diagnosing celiac disease includes blood tests for tissue transglutaminase antibodies, followed by a confirmatory small intestine biopsy if needed1.
Most importantly, testing must be done before starting a gluten-free diet. This is because going gluten-free before being tested can erase the antibodies doctors need to detect the disease. For people with celiac disease, strict lifelong gluten avoidance is non-negotiable.
Even tiny amounts in the form of crumbs, shared toasters, or contaminated cooking oil can cause harm. There is no “mostly gluten-free” option if for the roughly 1% of the population that has diagnosed celiac disease; a number that could be slightly higher if we accounted for undiagnosed cases tucked inside vague labels like IBS or unexplained anemia1.
Most people with the genes that are related to celiac tolerate gluten for years before the immune system turns on them. Diagnosis happens mostly in two major peaks, childhood, and mid-adulthood with a median age around 40. Women are about twice as likely to be diagnosed as men, following the familiar autoimmune pattern. That reality hasn’t stopped the wellness industry from treating gluten like a universal poison.
Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity (NCGS): Real, but Different
After celiac disease became more widely recognized, another category emerged: Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity, or NCGS. These are people who report symptoms after eating gluten, bloating, fatigue, headaches, “brain fog,” but test negative for both celiac disease and wheat allergy2,3.
And to be clear: NCGS is real. It’s recognized in the medical literature and is not just “in their heads.” But it’s also very different from celiac disease, biologically, clinically, and epidemiologically.
How NCGS Differs from Celiac
No autoimmune gut damage:
Biopsies show normal intestinal villi.
No flattening or malabsorption like in celiac1
No consistent biomarkers:
Blood tests for anti-tTG antibodies are negative.
Some immune activation can occur, but it’s subtle and inconsistent4.
Symptoms are often non-specific:
Overlap heavily with IBS, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), and general dietary intolerances3.
How Common Is Real NCGS?
Estimates vary wildly depending on study design.
When tested rigorously, using double-blind placebo-controlled gluten challenges, the actual prevalence is much lower than self-reports suggest3).
One systematic review found that many people who think they’re gluten sensitive react just as much to placebo foods2.x
Translation: Feeling worse after pasta doesn’t automatically mean gluten is your enemy.
The Problem with Self-Diagnosis
Most people who claim to be gluten-sensitive have never been tested. They feel bloated after a sandwich, blame gluten, and never look deeper. But as studies show, many of these cases are driven by other factors:
FODMAP intolerance (poorly absorbed fermentable carbs)
General ultra-processed diet effects
Nocebo response (expecting gluten to hurt, so it does)
That’s why real clinical guidelines recommend that anyone suspecting gluten sensitivity should be evaluated for celiac first, and that proper blinded food challenges be considered before making lifelong dietary changes 1.
The Blind Taste Test Experiment
If you really want to know whether gluten itself is your problem, don’t just trust how you feel after eating. Have a trusted friend (with your consent) serve you meals, some with hidden gluten, some without, without telling you which is which until a couple of days later. Track your symptoms honestly. If you can’t reliably tell the difference, it probably isn’t gluten. (Spoiler: In formal clinical studies, most people can’t.)
Why This Matters
Because when figures like Mark Hyman tell the public that gluten is dangerous for “everyone,” they aren’t just wrong, they are actively muddying the water between serious autoimmune disease, legitimate (but rare) NCGS, and everyday digestive noise.
Real gluten sensitivity exists. But it’s rarer, fuzzier, and biologically messier than the wellness world wants you to believe.
And collapsing all these distinctions, treating a complex clinical phenomenon like a pop diet tip, doesn’t help the people who genuinely need clarity. It just sells more cookbooks.
Muddying Science with Fear
If celiac disease is serious, and non-celiac gluten sensitivity is real but rare, where did the idea come from that gluten is a universal danger, hiding inside your sandwich like a loaded gun?
For that, we can thank wellness entrepreneurs like Dr. Mark Hyman. Across years of blog posts and media appearances, Hyman has pushed a narrative that grossly exaggerates the risks of gluten for the general population.
In doing so, he doesn’t just mislead the public, he actively erodes the distinction between real disease and vague discomfort, leaving readers more confused than when they started.
Let’s walk through a few of his biggest claims.
Claim 1: “Gluten sensitivity is killing millions.”
Hyman Quote:
“There was a 35% increased risk of death even in those with gluten sensitivity without celiac disease.” (“Gluten: What You Don’t Know Might Kill You,” 20115)
Reality Check:
The study Hyman cites (Ludvigsson et al., 2009) did not find that casual gluten sensitivity kills healthy people. It found that individuals already undergoing biopsy or testing, such as people with abnormal antibodies or gut inflammation, had slightly higher mortality risks compared to the general population (Ludvigsson et al., 2009).
The absolute risk increase was small, and much of it was concentrated in the first year after biopsy, suggesting preexisting illnesses, not gluten exposure alone. Hyman collapses this distinction entirely, treating a small, complex clinical population as if it represents anyone who feels tired after a bowl of pasta.
Even worse, modern research shows that real non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) involves no autoimmune gut destruction and no systemic immune activation (Cárdenas-Torres et al., 2021). Exaggerating associations like this doesn’t protect patients. It breeds fear, confusion, and dietary paranoia.
Claim 2: “Gluten creates ‘leaky gut’ in everyone.”
Hyman Quote:
“Gluten can cause the release of an inflammatory protein called zonulin, which opens up the junctions in the lining of the gut and causes gaps, allowing particles to leak into the bloodstream.” (“To Gluten or Not to Gluten,” 20196)
Reality Check:
It’s true that gluten can transiently increase zonulin levels in the gut, in people who already have genetic predispositions4. But in healthy individuals, any increase is typically mild, short-lived, and corrected rapidly.
Exercise, infections, and even alcohol can cause greater temporary changes without sparking autoimmune disease3. The idea that eating a sandwich casually “blows holes” in everyone’s gut barrier is simply false. It’s classic wellness fear-mongering: taking a real molecular detail, stripping away context, and turning it into a dietary horror story.
Claim 3: “Everyone would benefit from going gluten-free.”
Hyman Quote:
“Simply eliminating gluten may help you achieve lifelong vibrant health.” (“Gluten: What You Don’t Know Might Kill You,” 20115)
Reality Check:
For the 1% of people with celiac disease1, and for the small subset with rigorously confirmed NCGS2, gluten avoidance is life-changing.
For everyone else, there’s no credible evidence that removing gluten improves health outcomes. In fact, unnecessary gluten-free diets often:
Lower fiber intake7
Increase consumption of ultra-processed, refined gluten-free products
Raise the risk of micronutrient deficiencies (B vitamins, iron)
Gluten is not a universal toxin. It’s a protein found in bread, barley, and beer. Most people digest it every day without incident. Convincing the general public otherwise doesn’t make people healthier.
The tragedy here isn’t just that Hyman is wrong. It’s that he confuses real medical needs with lifestyle fads, drowning out the voices of patients who actually need gluten-free diets to survive and pushing millions of healthy people into unnecessary, nutritionally poorer diets.
In the next section, we’ll step back and ask: If gluten isn’t the enemy, what actually is?
(And yes, some of it has to do with what Hyman gets partly right, but for all the wrong reasons.)
The Real Problem Isn’t Gluten, It’s Ultra-Processed Food
It’s easy to roll my eyes at everything Mark Hyman says about gluten. But here’s the frustrating part, buried underneath the exaggerations, he’s accidentally brushing up against a real problem.
Just not the one he thinks it is. When people go gluten-free, they tend to replace bread and pasta with heavily processed, starchy, sugary alternatives like gluten-free cookies, gluten-free crackers, and gluten-free frozen meals. The problem with that is these products usually have less fiber, more refined carbohydrates, and more added fats and emulsifiers. They’re part of a larger category that’s increasingly recognized in public health: ultra-processed foods (UPFs).
UPFs aren’t dangerous because they’re gluten-free. They’re dangerous because they’re stripped of whole food structures, padded with additives, and optimized to hit the brain’s reward centers harder than natural foods ever could. That’s the real problem. And it’s one Hyman could have pointed to with credibility, if he hadn’t buried it under layers of nonsense about gluten itself.
Sidebar:
UPF comes from the NOVA classification system which groups foods by degree of processing, not nutrient content.
· Group 1: Unprocessed or minimally processed foods (e.g., fresh fruits, grains, meat).
· Group 2: Processed culinary ingredients (e.g., oils, butter, sugar).
· Group 3: Processed foods (e.g., bread, cheese, canned veggies).
· Group 4: Ultra-processed foods (e.g., packaged snacks, soft drinks, chicken nuggets, instant noodles).
With that in mind, a Little Debbie’s cookie and some soy milk technically both count as UPFs, but they are not nutritionally comparable. Processing itself isn’t a problem in itself, it’s what some processing adds or subtracts that matters.
“Real Food” Is About Fiber, Balance, and Structure
Whole foods, whether they contain gluten or not, are nutrient-dense, fiber-rich, and structured in ways that regulate digestion naturally. When you strip away that structure, grind the carbohydrates into fine powders, add sugar, emulsify the fats, and load it with flavor enhancers, you create foods that digest rapidly, spike blood sugar, fuel overeating, and contribute to chronic disease risk. That’s true whether it says “gluten-free” on the box or not. It’s like juicing as opposed to just blending the fruit. Juicing strips away the good fibers and leaves you with (awesome tasting) sugary vitamin water.
In other words, the problem isn’t gluten. The problem is what happens when you turn real food into dust and glue and sugar and call it lunch.
When we blame gluten for everything, we miss the real systemic issues of industrial food formulation, ultra-refined ingredients, and marketing-driven health halos. It lets companies keep doing what they’ve always done, which is sell junk food under a new label the average person may see as “healthier.” All while people like Hyman spin a story that sounds sciencey but falls apart under a second look.
You don’t need to fear gluten. You need to fear being sold a “health food” that’s just junk in better packaging. The truth is simpler and harder than the wellness industry wants it to be. Gluten is a medical issue for a few. But it’s a marketing opportunity for many. And it’s a scapegoat for problems that have far more to do with how we make and sell food than with wheat itself.
The real path forward isn’t fear. It’s skepticism of a kind that asks sharper questions, demands real evidence, and refuses to turn food into a battlefield.
1. Lebwohl B, Rubio-Tapia A. Epidemiology, Presentation, and Diagnosis of Celiac Disease. Gastroenterology. 2021;160(1):63-75. doi:10.1053/j.gastro.2020.06.098
2. Cárdenas-Torres FI, Cabrera-Chávez F, Figueroa-Salcido OG, Ontiveros N. Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity: An Update. Medicina (Mex). 2021;57(6):526. doi:10.3390/medicina57060526
3. Barbaro MR, Cremon C, Stanghellini V, Barbara G. Recent advances in understanding non-celiac gluten sensitivity. F1000Research. 2018;7:F1000 Faculty Rev-1631. doi:10.12688/f1000research.15849.1
4. Uhde M, Caio G, De Giorgio R, Green PH, Volta U, Alaedini A. Subclass Profile of IgG Antibody Response to Gluten Differentiates Nonceliac Gluten Sensitivity From Celiac Disease. Gastroenterology. 2020;159(5):1965-1967.e2. doi:10.1053/j.gastro.2020.07.032
5. Gluten: What You Don’t Know Might Kill You. Mark Hyman, MD. March 17, 2011. Accessed April 26, 2025. https://drhyman.com/blogs/content/gluten-what-you-dont-know-might-kill-you
6. To Gluten or Not to Gluten. Mark Hyman, MD. April 9, 2019. Accessed April 26, 2025. https://drhyman.com/blogs/content/to-gluten-or-not-to-gluten
7. Vici G, Belli L, Biondi M, Polzonetti V. Gluten free diet and nutrient deficiencies: A review. Clin Nutr. 2016;35(6):1236-1241. doi:10.1016/j.clnu.2016.05.002