Gluten-free Diets Can Be Unhealthy for Kids

Unless your child has been diagnosed with celiac disease or gluten sensitivity, gluten-free foods may not be healthy for your youngster. Here's what you should know.

You don’t have to shop at a health food store these days to find foods labeled “gluten-free.” In fact, you can find just about anything normally made from flour — like pasta, cookies, cakes, and bread — in a gluten-free version.

But that doesn’t mean gluten-free foods are nutritionally identical to their gluten-rich counterparts. And researchers are warning a gluten-free diet can be unhealthy for kids who have no proven medical reason to avoid gluten.

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Eating gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye can trigger a potentially serious autoimmune digestive disease called celiac disease. To make a diagnosis, your doctor takes a careful medical and family history and performs a physical exam, blood tests, and sometimes biopsies.

As many as one in 133 Americans of all ages have celiac disease, including children, according to the National Center for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Symptoms include gastrointestinal pain, bloating, fatigue, and chronic diarrhea that can result in difficulty absorbing nutrients. Left unchecked, celiac disease may damage the small intestine.

But not only people with diagnosed celiac disease opt for gluten-free diets. Others believe gluten causes their joint pain, indigestion, fatigue, and other symptoms. Not every doctor accepts the syndrome, called gluten intolerance, yet countless people insist they feel better avoiding gluten-containing foods. Some claim a gluten-free diet helps with weight loss, too.

Whatever the reasons, millions of Americans shun gluten. The number of cases of people with diagnosed celiac disease has risen in recent decades, and researchers estimate 2 million undiagnosed people have the disease.

The food industry has responded, making a growing variety of gluten-free food products. As a result, many people who avoid gluten serve what they are eating to their children.

One study, however, revealed that people should not consider gluten-free products substitutes for their gluten-containing counterparts (such as wheat). In fact, the nutrition quality of gluten-free foods can be markedly different and have unhealthy consequences for kids.

Investigators from the Research Group on Celiac Disease and Digestive Immunopathology at the Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria La Fe in Valencia, Spain, compared the ingredients in 654 gluten-free products to 655 gluten-containing products. Overall, the gluten-free items were loaded with more calories and had a different nutritional composition than their gluten-containing counterparts.

For example, the gluten-free breads, pasta, pizzas, and flours the researchers analyzed had significantly less protein and far more fat — including the saturated type known to promote heart disease — than gluten-containing foods. The differences, over time, could negatively impact children's growth and increase their risk of childhood obesity, the researchers concluded.

A balanced diet containing fresh fruits and vegetables, lean proteins, and a variety of carbohydrates is the best way for children to stay healthy. Gluten-free food is not the same as healthy food. Fruits and vegetables are naturally gluten-free, and every child should eat them.

But a gluten-free cookie is still a cookie.

Whether you are going gluten-free or not, it’s always a good idea to check labels and compare brands and formulations to make sure your children are getting the healthiest food choices.

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