This morning I went, perhaps for the last time, to my local Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) to have coffee and a treat and spend a couple of hours working. I ordered what has become my usual pairing in recent weeks -- a latte and a Valencia orange cake.

"I'm sorry," said the barista, "but we aren't carrying the Valencia orange cakes anymore. Would you like something else instead?"

Um, for me, you don't have "something else."

See, I recently found out that I have celiac disease. Celiac is a lifelong inability to properly digest gluten -- a gluey protein found in wheat and barley and a few other grains. Once thought to be extremely rare, recent studies have shown that it's quite common -- but many of those affected don't (yet) know it. And left untreated, it can cause all sorts of nasty health problems.

At the moment, there's only one treatment: Don't eat gluten. No bread, no cookies, no oatmeal, no cereal, no soy sauce, no beer, no to all sorts of things that you probably enjoy every day without realizing that there are gluten molecules floating around in them. Things that I enjoyed too, until recently. Though right now, after a few weeks on this diet, I'm enjoying something else -- the best health I've had in my adult life, by a long shot. It really is amazing.

But I digress -- this is, after all, an article about Starbucks.

What does Starbucks have to do with this?
Earlier this year, responding to the increasing number of people who are being diagnosed with this thing, Starbucks introduced a tasty gluten-free treat -- the Valencia orange cake. It was magical -- and the celiac community reacted with delight. Why magical? Because it had just a short list of natural ingredients, wasn't overly expensive, and -- unlike most gluten-free pastries, which tend to taste somewhat like pastry-flavored sawdust -- it was delicious. It had the texture of actual cake. As we celiacs say, it was something we would have eaten anyway. What a treat!

But now I can't get it. Apparently it has a short shelf life, and although it supposedly freezes well, most Starbucks stores don't have freezers, which meant a lot of dumped inventory and not a lot of profit.

Bummer.

But this is much bigger than my missing a little cake I didn't really need to be eating anyway. I think this gluten-free thing is on the verge of becoming really big business. And it looks to me like Starbucks is jumping off a new trend just as it's picking up steam, and that seems like a really bad move.

Why "gluten-free" is about to become big business
As I mentioned, celiac disease was long thought to be very rare, but research done in the past few years has determined that more than 2 million Americans have it. It can be the root cause of many disorders, ranging from various autoimmune diseases and gastrointestinal cancers to depression and, recent case studies suggest, autism. Continued...