Most of the gluten-free frenzy is a marketing strategy to get people to buy more expensive products. The marketers even go so far as to call wheat and gluten a poison. You do not need to worry about Lauren unless she starts having health issues.
Some people have Celiac disease, which is a serious debilitating response to gluten which must be avoided. For them it is like a poison. True Celiac disease is relatively uncommon. Chances of Lauren having that are low.
Some people have allergies to gluten or gluten sensitivity other than Celiac disease, and there is a huge variety of symptoms for this. I don't think there have been enough studies to know how severe this is or what percentage of people have this problem. Most of the evidence is anecdotal. My neighbor was having joint pain in her ankles. The pain would come and go and she noticed it was particularly severe the morning after a huge pizza binge. Gluten maybe? She tried eliminating it from her diet, and after a week, no more joint pain, at all, even after a 50 mile hike with her boy scout son. Pretty convincing evidence, I think.
So, why the recent problem with people eating wheat? The simple answer is the wheat we grow is genetically different now (beginning in 1960), we process wheat differently (refining the healthy stuff out), and we eat far too much of the refined stuff, since it is cheap and easy to get.
This article has some good info, but I did not source the author to see who paid for it. It definitely has an anti-wheat tone, so take it with a grain of salt.
http://authoritynutrition.com/modern-wheat-health-nightmare/
Moral of the story: Most of us have to worry more about obesity from wheat than allergies.
