This New York Times article directly relates to people with celiac disease. Why? Because it shows that when people are food secure - nay, healthy food secure (not just what they want to eat, but healthy food that they want to eat), then health care costs go down.

“We need to put food back in the heart of health care,” says Zoe Finch Totten, Full Yield’s chief executive. “It’s the cheapest way to deal with health and the simplest, and definitely the most pleasurable.”

When I think about asking for more gluten free foods in cafeterias, restaurants, and places of transportation, like airports, trains, and ferries (BC Ferries in particular), I often stop myself beforehand and question whether providing gluten free food would make a difference to their sales or their customer satisfaction. If I conclude that they wouldn’t care about it, I usually just go along my hungry way.

But those are places that don’t impact our day-to-day living as much as say, our work places. The NY Times article tells a story of not just food security, but food security at work:

“A lot of employers are doing these modest and piecemeal efforts at wellness and they have not worked,” said Gary Hirshberg, the chief executive of Stonyfield Farm, a yogurt maker, and a member of Full Yield’s board. “This is a comprehensive health management program with food as the base. And it’s going to save companies a lot of money.”

I am all for promoting healthy diets at places of employment and education. The more employers are turned on the these kind of stories, the more chance we have of convincing them that providing healthy gluten free food is important to the health of their employers and to their business.