FDA finally regulating foods labeled ‘gluten-free’

People most likely feel better, Antinoro added, because they have improved the quality of their diet, cutting out starchy snacks while replacing them with fruits and vegetables. That could also explain why some successfully lose weight - that is, until they discover gluten-free brownies at the health-food store. DEBORAH KOTZ

Corncakes wrote: Antinoro said there is no reason to avoid gluten if you are not celiac. [But] many families with one celiac or gluten intolerant opt to become a gluten-free household, to avoid making the celiacs sick by accidental cross-contamination.

Narfrolyat wrote: Two seconds after you discover the gluten-free brownies, you discover the price sticker on the gluten-free brownies, and you go home and make them yourself for far cheaper.

Kayti wrote: Gluten is also detected in oats.

Deborah Kotz responds: Gluten has been detected in oats, but that’s because of cross-contamination; oats are often packaged in the same processing plant as wheat products. Antinoro told me that she tells her patients to buy only purified oat products.

Good genes, not lifestyle, may be key to getting to 100

As a health reporter, I wish I could ignore some studies - like the one published last week showing that diet, exercise, and other lifestyle choices do not make a bit of difference in getting people to the 100-year mark and beyond.

Study coauthor Dr. Nir Barzilai, who heads the Institute of Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, told me centenarians simply won the genetic lottery, aging slower than the rest of us. “But this population is just 1 out of 10,000,“ he explained. “They’re not us, the poor people who don’t have genes to protect us from smoking, lack of exercise, and a poor diet.’’

The study, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, did find that men who made it to the century mark were somewhat less likely to have smoked, but women centenarians were just as likely to have smoked as their shorter-lived peers.