What Is A Gluten-Free Diet, How Does It Work, And How Effective Is It In Reducing Weight Or Improving Health?

February 1, 2009 -- Question: What is a gluten-free diet, how does it work, and how effective is it in reducing weight or improving health?

Answer: A gluten-free diet is a diet that restricts gluten, which is a compound that's found in bread, pasta and other carbohydrate-containing foods. So a gluten-free diet doesn't really say what you should do with foods in general other than to restrict gluten. So it's not specifically a weight loss diet, but it's very useful and has been studied for celiac disease, which is a gluten sensitivity. It's a specific kind of disease that a doctor typically will diagnose and then prescribe the gluten-free diet.

So as such it doesn't really talk about the other type of nutrition, but if you combine a gluten-free diet with one of these other approaches that have the sufficient science and nutrition that should be a way to go.

So it's really a therapeutic diet for a specific medical condition.