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I've known people with celiacs since I started college. In my first "college job" two of the staff avoided gluten, one had celiacs (her grandmother had it) and the other had chrons and found it caused flares.While I am sure that gluten, peanuts, MSG, mono this, di that all have some subset of the population that benefit from avoiding them and a smaller subset that absolutely has to avoid them altogether, I don't even read the articles on this stuff anymore because I get the story from the pattern. To wit, I hardly ever heard the word gluten a few years back, then it started to marginally hit my radar and I saw a few items pop up in stores - probably, this was when a rational world would have stopped as the small need for these products was met. Then, I could feel it becoming a "thing" as the word was everywhere in the supermarket and bakeries, I saw (didn't read) news stories on it and even heard people talking about the benefits of a "gluten free" diet. It has, thus, reached the stupid fad stage where consumer passion and venal marketing is in overdrive - which means it has about peaked. In two years, it will have shrunk back to a small segment of the supermarket (probably properly aligned to the small segment of the population that truly needs gluten-free items) and the world will be on to its next "life-enhancing" thing. Hence, I don't pay these events any attention as the social / cultural pattern that hits my disinterested radar tells me all I need to know.
I think one factor in knowing people who have food issues is that we're sort of a club. We've all shared experiences and tend to remember each others issues. Like I know pretty much everyone who has a food allergy in my life. We understand each other. We also take mental note and try to accommodate one another. (For instance, I made gluten-free cakes in college for my office mates; egg free cookies for a friend's daughter, etc. Other allergic people make sure the food they serve has an alternate if it has the preservative I'm allergic to, etc.)
So whereas if someone mentioned to you in passing, "I'm allergic to eggs" you might forget. Being part of the club, I'd likely remember.