J. Z. Kelley

“To begin eating a forbidden food means becoming a member of the group you once defined as inferior and unclean.”
― Alan Levinovitz, The Gluten Lie: And Other Myths About What You Eat

“One 2009 study of lactose found that 14 out of 54 patients with documented intolerance to lactose reported symptoms after ingesting sugar pills. They were lactose intolerant, but it was their expectation of symptoms that made them sick. Strong nocebo effects were also observed in the studies of gluten sensitivity out of Monash University.”
― Alan Levinovitz, The Gluten Lie: And Other Myths About What You Eat

“The prospect of healing the world with dietary laws has always been awfully appealing, especially when those laws fit nicely with timeless myths or intuitive superstitions. The result is sloppy science: identify a suspicious substance, run a few studies that confirm what you set out to find, and presto, a new rule is born, sanctioned by reputable members of the scientific community. Don’t eat too much salt. Don’t eat too much fat. Don’t eat sugar. Don’t eat gluten.”
― Alan Levinovitz, The Gluten Lie: And Other Myths About What You Eat

“That’s because then, as now, the appeal of dietary fads had to do with myths, not facts. In the case of the Daoists, grain prohibition represented rejection of modern culture and the promise of return to a mythic natural paradise. Suffering, disease, and death were ineradicable aspects of the present, so monks explained their dietary practices with an appealing fiction about a preagricultural paradise past.”
― Alan Levinovitz, The Gluten Lie: And Other Myths About What You Eat