The "Banana Diet" for celiac disease

Tricia Thompson has a very interesting post on the history of celiac disease on her blog today.

The gluten-free diet has not always been the treatment of choice for celiac disease. Before the 1950s and the identification of wheat gluten as the culprit in celiac disease, the thinking was that people with celiac disease could not properly absorb carbohydrates and/or fat. A particularly interesting dietary treatment used during this time was the banana diet, made popular by physician Sidney Haas.

This diet restricted both carbohydrates (with the exception of ripe bananas) and fat. In his famous paper, “The value of the banana in the treatment of celiac disease,” published in 1924, Dr. Haas presented the following foods as a typical diet for a child with celiac disease: albumin milk, pot cheese, bananas (as many as the child would take, usually four to eight each day), oranges, vegetables, gelatin, and meat.

Ben, Shira and I are very thankful that we were diagnosed with celiac disease in the 21st century. I can't even begin to imagine eating that stomach churning diet. We would have coped with the bananas, oranges and vegetables, but the thought of the rest has my stomach churning.

Celiac Disease

I find it interesting and weird to see how many people define themselves by their diseases. Everyone in my family has celiac disease. What it means to us is that we avoid gluten in our diet and life goes on as normal.

I belong to a large, international email list for people with celiac disease. When I read posts on this list I realize that this is definitely not the case with many people with celiac disease. So many people appear to let this little dietary hiccup take over their lives. Before I go on, I belong to this list, not to talk about our disease, but to find out news about products which suddenly become unsafe and to find out about good restaurants that are safe for us in various cities.

One of my biggest bugbears is a post that I see with startling regularity. Someone will want to know how to get their medical insurance or the IRS to pay for their gluten free food. My other one is how people see the gluten free diet as restrictive and how they worry about what they are going to eat.

I just don't understand why people feel the need to duplicate the Standard American Diet (SAD) when they go gluten free. Instead of concentrating on all the wonderful, naturally gluten free foods, they insist on trying to make fake versions of the hideous baked goods that flood the American market. Then, because it is expensive to do this, they expect someone else to foot the bill. WTF? You insist on eating an unhealthy diet and then think that it's medically necessary and someone else should pay for it?

A post came through to the list a few weeks ago that had me totally floored. This woman was complaining about how refined the gluten free flours were and how gluten free baked goods were not vitamin enriched. She felt that it was a slight to the celiac community because gluten containing breads etc are vitamin enriched, but not gluten free ones. In her mind gluten free foods should get the same treatment in the interest of fairness. Ahh, fairness, that's a topic for another rant on another day.

Do these people have no concept about good nutrition? Stripping food of it's natural nutrition and then adding in synthetic vitamins does not make it healthy. Why not eat unprocessed foods the way nature made them? Instead of eating a gluten free slice of bread that contributes nothing but calories, why not eat an apple, brimming with phytonutrients?

Whenever I come across someone newly diagnosed with celiac I try to explain to them that we have almost unlimited food choices but that we willingly limit those choices every day. When we discover that we have celiac disease, we are just changing how we limit our choices. It is impossible to eat every food available to us, so we have to self select. What's so hard about changing the selection? I wish people would stop seeing a gluten free diet as restrictive.