An Answer to the Question You’ve Been Too Afraid to Ask: What the Heck Is Gluten?

If you had a quarter for every time you heard someone talking about gluten lately, you’d probably have enough money to buy yourself an entire gluten-free pizza or something.

Clearly gluten — and talking about gluten and debating the merits of a gluten and then talking about gluten some more — is the cool thing right now, so if you don’t actually know what the heck gluten is, you’ve probably been too embarrassed to ask. But don’t worry! The folks of AsapSCIENCE have created this handy explainer video to break it all down, beginning with what gluten is and why some people aren’t eating it.

Spoiler alert: if you don’t have Celiac disease and you don’t suffer from symptoms like cramps or diarrhea after eating gluten, there’s no real health benefit to going gluten-free. In fact, there are even some risks to cutting it out. We can only assume that the fad will eventually fade out, leaving the gluten-free life to those who actually need to be living it.