Gluten free diets are trendy.
Each time I say that, someone (read: a person who doesn’t eat gluten) has defended the ‘lifestyle choice’ by saying that coeliac disease is a very real issue. Which is true. Though it’s hardly common, affecting an estimated 0.5-1% of the world’s population. Needless to say, the flurry of GF restaurants popping up all over Australia certainly don’t owe thanks exclusively to people battling the disease.
In fact, the majority of people who’ve opted to go gluten-free have done so by choice, having read something somewhere about how gluten was the devil in hiding. This is, in part, because of savvy marketing campaigns, and while there are potential benefits in eliminating gluten from your diet, experts in the field remain divided on the validity of doing so in respect to non-coeliacs.
But back to gluten-free being trendy. “Is this gluten-free?” and “I don’t eat gluten,” are phrases that are now common part of cafe and hipster eatery dialect. So much so that international brands are jumping on the bandwagon. Enter Zara’s now deceased ‘Are you gluten free?’ t-shirt, which has been removed from stores after 53,000 unhappy folk said it was offensive and trivialised the gluten-free way of life. How dare you, Zara.
A petition was started on Change.org by one Marta Casadesús, Spain, and received the required amount of signatures in less than one week. Inditex, a Spanish multinational clothing company that distributes Zara, released a statement apologising for the shirt.
“We sincerely regret that this case might be interpreted as a trivialization of coeliac disease, the absolute opposite of our intentions.” the statement read. “We would like to apologies [sic], in any case, if anyone interpreted the T-shirt in this way.”
+1 FOR PC.
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