Less than 1% of the population is allergic to gluten, peanuts, or nuts. For some reason, it has become "way cool*" to eat gluten free food. Of course, doing this may seriously affect your nutrition For instance, not eating nuts, such as walnuts, seems to be contributing to low sperm counts in men with Northern European ancestry.
This is part of what I call the OVERBOARD phenomena. For example, the people who can not eat gluten wanted a label on food to state whether or not it contained gluten, a very nutritious vegetable protein. In order to get this done, they had to run a PR campaign explaining to people why this was important. Since the symptoms of the rare gluten allergy are the same as some of the symptoms of stress, LOTS of people decided they must have a gluten allergy without asking for a medical confirmation.
Another, more serious example of the OVERBOARD phenomena is addiction to drugs. Less than 5% of the population is addicted to an addictive substance. (An addictive substance means anything that the DEA believes can cause addiction, including heroin, alcohol and the use of the non addictive marijuana.) But we are using more and more draconian measures to try to stop people from using non alcohol addictive substances even though 95% are not addicted to ANYTHING.
The heroin problem affects me on a daily basis as doctors refuse to prescribe needed medication for pain because I might be one of the small percentage of people who are addicted. I do not blame the doctors, but blame the DEA for their harassment of doctors who help people in real pain.
* "Way cool" means that WAY to many people are doing something because other people are doing it.
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