The Gluten-Free Diet: Difficulties Celiac Disease Patients have to Face Daily

Celiac disease (CD) is an autoimmune enteropathy triggered by the ingestion of gluten (the water?insoluble protein of wheat and equivalent proteins of barley, rye and oats). The treatment consists of lifelong adherence to a strict gluten?free diet (GFD). Although it might seem simple, removing gluten from the diet can be a difficult task because wheat and the other cereals that contain gluten are widely consumed around the world. Therefore, the GFD may bring a lot of social compromise to the patient’s life. Besides that, the celica’s diet demands extreme care in regards to the complete elimination of gluten, since gluten traces may still be able to induce damage to the intestinal mucosa. Moreover, aspects like high cost, poor sensorial and technological quality and unavailability of gluten?free products, cross contamination with gluten?containing cereals and inappropriate food labeling may jeopardize compliance to the treatment. The consequences of maintaining gluten in the diet are well established in the literature and include development of lymphomas and gastrointestinal carcinomas, osteoporosis, spleen atrophy, reproductive disorders, among others and so it is essential to be aware of the obstacles patients must face and come up with viable solutions to overcome those. The aim of this work was to perform a review on difficulties regarding the GFD an attempt to providing basis for possible strategies to contribute to diet compliance.