San Francisco restaurant closes and leaves angry note: "we don't give a f*** about gluten-free"

[KurtNYC]

159. I told a neighbor that the trash behind one "organic" themed restaurant was full of SYSCO boxes

He asked a staff person there about the food, discreetly, and she told him that 80% of what goes on the plate is SYSCO stuff then she launched into a rant about how certain customers verbally beat her up during their order:

Do you have vegan omlettes? WHY NOT? You SHOULD!

When she suggests a strict vegan restaurant down the street might be better able to meet their expectations, they get more pissed off. They stay, take 10 minutes to order, give her a hard time although she is just telling them the truth and what their options are and then they leave a tiny tip as a "message" (to management).

I had lost track of the research into gluten sensitivity. Last thing I heard was there was no documentable "allergy" to gluten although celiac disease is quite real and many non-celiac people report being aided by a gluten free diet. Found this:

But like any meticulous scientist, Gibson wasn’t satisfied with his first study. His research turned up no clues to what actually might be causing subjects’ adverse reactions to gluten. Moreover, there were many more variables to control! What if some hidden confounder was mucking up the results? He resolved to repeat the trial with a level of rigor lacking in most nutritional research. Subjects would be provided with every single meal for the duration of the trial. Any and all potential dietary triggers for gastrointestinal symptoms would be removed, including lactose (from milk products), certain preservatives like benzoates, propionate, sulfites, and nitrites, and fermentable, poorly absorbed short-chain carbohydrates, also known as FODMAPs. And last, but not least, nine days worth of urine and fecal matter would be collected. With this new study, Gibson wasn’t messing around.
...
Analyzing the data, Gibson found that each treatment diet, whether it included gluten or not, prompted subjects to report a worsening of gastrointestinal symptoms to similar degrees. Reported pain, bloating, nausea, and gas all increased over the baseline low-FODMAP diet. Even in the second experiment, when the placebo diet was identical to the baseline diet, subjects reported a worsening of symptoms! The data clearly indicated that a nocebo effect, the same reaction that prompts some people to get sick from wind turbines and wireless signals, was at work here. Patients reported gastrointestinal distress without any apparent physical cause. Gluten wasn’t the culprit; the cause was likely psychological. Participants expected the diets to make them sick, and so they did. The finding led Gibson to the opposite conclusion of his 2011 research:

“In contrast to our first study… we could find absolutely no specific response to gluten.”

Instead, as RCS reported last week, FODMAPS are a far more likely cause of the gastrointestinal problems attributed to gluten intolerance. Jessica Biesiekierski, a gastroenterologist formerly at Monash University and now based out of the Translational Research Center for Gastrointestinal Disorders at the University of Leuven in Belgium,* and lead author of the study alongside Gibson, noted that when participants consumed the baseline low-FODMAP diet, almost all reported that their symptoms improved!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rosspomeroy/2014/05/15/non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-may-not-exist/