I’ve blogged about the fallacy of weight loss resulting from the modern vegan diet before. As the gluten-free trend continues I frequently hear about people choosing to go gluten-free in order to lose weight. Many packaged gluten-free foods have a health halo. That is, people believe that they’re healthy simply because they’re gluten-free. However, the same rules apply to gluten-free packaged foods as to any other packaged foods and label-reading is still essential.

You may lose weight on a gluten-free diet. However, you’re much more likely to do so if you’re not replacing one processed packaged food for another. In fact, many packaged gluten-free foods often have more calories than their traditional glutenous counterparts. While gluten-free breads continue to evolve and improve in formulation, many are still very dense and while their slices may appear smaller than regular bread they may still have equivalent, or more, calories.

Beyond calories, gluten-free baked goods usually have less fibre than glutenous baked goods. Gluten-free bread tends to have about 1 gram of fibre per slice. Compare that to regular whole wheat bread which generally has about 4 grams of fibre per slice.

Before you decide to go gluten-free (without a doctor’s recommendation) remember that label-reading still applies. Ensure that you’re still getting sufficient fibre. Regardless of whether or not you’re going gluten-free, you should try to choose minimally processed foods as often as possible. Finally, gluten-free doesn’t mean calorie-free but it often means fibre-free.