ALL IN YOUR MIND:

Avoiding certain ingredients goes in cycles: Back in the 70s, it was sugar. Then it was fat, then saturated fat. Then fat was in but carbs were out. Gluten is the pariah ingredient du jour, and there are a lot of healthy people shelling out big bucks for gluten-free food they probably don't need.

"Most people must be doing this because they think they feel better, or they do feel better but they're not diagnosed with gluten issues," says Harry Balzer, chief industry analyst at the NPD Group. As TIME Healthland pointed out:

People who have bad reactions to common gluten-containing foods -- pasta, breads, baked goods and breakfast cereal -- may actually be sensitive to something else... It's also possible that some people develop gastrointestinal or other symptoms simply because they believe they're food-sensitive.

None of this would be a huge problem, except that this is an exceptionally pricey food fad. Producing gluten-free items, especially baked goods, is more expensive because manufacturers have to come up with alternatives that will give the finished product the same light, chewy texture that gluten imparts.

Researchers from Dalhousie Medical School at Dalhousie University in Canada compared the prices of 56 ordinary grocery items that contain gluten with their gluten-free counterparts. All of the gluten-free ones were more expensive, and some were much more expensive. On average, gluten-free products were a whopping 242% pricier than the gluten-containing versions.

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