16,860

In March 2009, I wrote a blog post entitled 15,900.  The post was an explanation on the estimated number of Triangle residents with Celiac Disease.  See below for my new estimate - almost 2 years later and we've added approximately 1,000 Celiacs to the count.  We're almost to the capacity of the RBC Center.



16,860 - That's my estimate on the number of Celiac's in Triangle area.

16,354 - If you go by the NFCA's estimate that 97% of Celiacs are undiagnosed, this is my estimate of undiagnosed Celiac Disease cases in the Triangle.

So here we are, more than 500 diagnosed Celiacs - with more coming each day thanks to increasing awareness and better diagnosis. From the statistics kept on visitors to The Gluten Free Raleigh Blog and the number of RSS subscribers, I estimate that more than half of the 500+ are reading my blog each day. I didn't just make these numbers up of course; new information was released in an August 2010 article from the Triangle Business Journal about Triangle population estimates. The Raleigh-Cary area continues to lead the nation in growth.

“The Raleigh-Cary metropolitan area, which includes Wake, Johnston and Franklin counties, is calculated the population as of Aug. 4 at 1,173,716 – 47th largest among U.S. metros. The Raleigh-Cary area was ranked 59th in 2000. The Triangle has been near the top of the nation's growth chart for more than a decade, as newcomers poured into the area to take jobs in technology, tourism and academia. The resulting building boom, and the jobs that came with it, drew hundreds of thousands of new residents. The Durham-Chapel Hill metropolitan area, which includes Durham, Orange, Chatham and Person counties, didn't make the Top 100, but its population continued to swell to 512,446.”

So there are 1.686 million Triangle residents. Studies have estimated that 1% of the population in the United States has Celiac Disease. So what does this mean to all of us? The Triangle has a formidable number of Celiacs and this information should help drive the market for Gluten Free products. I hope to see more and more restaurants, grocery stores, etc... catering to us in the future. With almost 17,000 of the most loyal customers ever created, how could they not?