Will going gluten free mess up your gut bacteria?

The gluten in bread can cause serious problems in the susceptible.

Yes, going gluten free is trendy. And foregoing products made from wheat like bread, cookies, cakes and other processed foods is necessary for people with celiac, an auto-immune problem caused by gluten, a protein in wheat. But when there’s trendy, there’s always folks ready to trash the trend no matter what the facts.

So now that a small study from Spain (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19445821?log$=activity) shows that the gut bacteria in ten people who went gluten free for a month was not quite as healthy as before they skipped gluten there are plenty of trashers ready to use this as evidence for… for what exactly? Oh, that going gluten free can harm the beneficial bacteria in your digestive tract.

Well maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t, but this study doesn’t provide any real proof one way or the other. For instance, the probiotic (friendly) bacteria in your gut are influenced by what you eat. The more fruits and vegetables you eat, and the more fiber you consume, the healthier your bacteria are going to be. But in this study no mention is made of what the subjects were eating. Was it all junk food? Had the wheat foods they stopped eating been their only sources of fiber? The report from Spain doesn’t say.

Plus, the study was only of ten people – a pretty small sample. If you did this research on a hundred people the results might be completely different.

So, yes, if you stop eating foods with gluten, your gut bacteria might change. But if you eat plenty of fibrous fruits, vegetables and nuts, your friendly bacteria should stay friendly and happy. Don’t believe every little study that comes at you on the internet.