Celiac disease seems to run in my family. Two of my first cousins have severe cases. Once at Thanksgiving, one of them mistakenly took a couple bites of stuffing made from wheat bread instead of from the cornbread/chestnut stuffing made especially for her and a couple other family members who needed it. She ended up in the hospital and missed a week of work.

She's had several surgeries, and so has my other cousin. So yeah, definitely not a fad.

However. My former business partner, who falls for every fad in the universe apparently, decided once with the help of his father (who is a huge conspiracy theorist) that he was intolerant to gluten and would feel much better if he cut it out of his diet.

"Dude," I told him once in his office, "you and I have sat right here in this room eating boxes of donuts and then going out fishing and camping together for 2 days, barely even getting any sleep, and you providing most of the energy for that. So how is gluten a problem for you?"

"But I ate wheat bread yesterday and now I feel like shit."

"Um, have you considered the 12 pack of cheap beer you drank?"

Facepalm. Lol

(Note, this is not meant in any way to cast doubt on people who say they are gluten intolerant.)