This months edition of Yoga Journal includes a short article in which I am quoted on the topic of food intolerance. Although the interview was quite extensive and I believe that the writer had a good grasp of the topic of food allergies and intolerances, ultimately the article was trimmed down to contain very little quality information.
The article is titled “All That You Can Eat.” As you can see, even before the article started it wasn’t very helpful. As the article got rolling, as much as you can get rolling in 400 words, they proceeded make a mess of the words “allergy,” “intolerance” and even threw in “sensitivity” several times. Then they stated that you couldn’t test for food intolerances, which certainly isn’t the case for gluten intolerance. About the only thing that the article may have accomplished was to get people to consider that a wide range of symptoms may be caused by reactions to foods.
Yoga Journal failed to examine the history of the use of words “allergy” and “intolerance,” or to properly define these words, which is ultimately what leads to many misunderstandings when it comes to discussing these issues. They didn’t address gluten intolerance at all, nor did they mention lactose intolerance. And of course, once you introduce these two concepts you need to discuss the completely different mechanisms that underlie them.
The editors of this magazine boiled an important topic down to a few catchy phrases in order to fill space and sell more magazines. This in turn helps them sell more advertising. This is really too bad because I like yoga and I assume that the readers of Yoga Journal are intelligent people who would like to know more about this topic.
Unfortunately, at this point I can only conclude that you don’t want to be getting your dietary information from Yoga Journal. If they’d like to write a more comprehensive article on the topic then I’d be happy to talk with them.
If you’d like to read it for yourself you can find it at the following link. Unfortunately, it probably isn’t worth your time. http://www.yogajournal.com/lifestyle/2760
Dr. Wangen is the founder and medical director of the IBS Treatment Center, the award winning author of two books, and a nationally recognized speaker on digestive disorders. He has been on ABC, NBC, and Fox as well as public radio, and was named one of Seattle’s Top Doctors by Seattle Magazine.