Gluten has always been a huge part of diet so how come people are now intolerant? Is it just a trend? Were people always intolerant but there was no other option? Or has gluten changed though breeding?
Is it possible that people have made themselves more intolerant by excluding gluten from their diet thus losing the ability to digest it?
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In addition to the factors highlighted in other replies, there are a couple of things that are worth thinking about:
* Over time the means of testing for Gluten Intolerance have changed, as has the percentage of the population that gets tested – both of these will have a profound effect on the overall result. Would cases that are now recognised as Gluten Intolerance have been dismissed as something else in the past (blamed on lifestyle or weight, for example)? Are people now more aware of the condition and so more people opt to be tested?
* Is your question based upon actual figures, or on your perception of the subject? If the latter (which I suspect it is given the phrasing of the question) then you need to look at why your perception may have changed … Has increased use of social media made you more aware of the problem? Have the mainstream media altered their coverage? Have friends/family been diagnosed and this has made you read stories/articles that you’d previously have ignored?
As an example, Dyslexia has only become widely recognised in recent decades – go back even to the 70s and few people had heard of it. Children were simply written off as stupid when they couldn’t read. Testing in schools became more common (and accurate) and so the number of cases of dyslexia rocketed – although in reality the number of dyslexic people didn’t change, but the recorded number of cases did. Information would get published by schools and media coverage picked up, so the wider community found out about this condition (which, from their perspective, didn’t exist 5 years previously) that was suddenly affecting a significant number of children.
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