The Fresh Loaf

News & Information for Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts

Gluten Intolerance

  • Pin It
donsabi's picture

Gluten Intolerance

I am sure you have seem gluten free products emerging from every dark corner of the processed food industry.  It is all over the news media and during my last doctor visit his recommendation was, "stop eating gluten."   So what happened to bread?  I grew up in a family that had bread on the table at every meal and there was no obesity.  No one complained of stomach aches, bloating, IBS, where bread was responsible.  

I tired researching this but gluten seems to have been labeled the culprit with little to no investigation from the medical world.  However there seems to be far more to so-called gluten intolerance.   I came across a couple of articles that seem to point at other sources.  One theory is that the gut bacteria responsible for the digestion has been destroyed or severely weaken by antibiotics.  Another was and is the destruction of our gut bacteria from the use of fluorides.  Still another theory is the use of GM crops, such as BT corn, and the saturation of Round-UP ready crops with the herbicide Round-Up.   I believe the reason for the relatively recent advent of gluten intolerance has been caused by the destruction of our gut bacteria and not wheat.  

I bake my bread with the use of five ingredients, a good white flour, yeast, water, sugar, and salt and have no issues.  (I do have issues with WW and whole grains but I don't want to sidetrack the subject).   Some of the problems caused by modern day industrial bread is probably caused by the additives as such I don't think that homemade and commercial breads can be compared.   I  believe that gluten intolerance is caused by the products that have taken a toll on our digestive system, antibiotics, fluorides, insecticides, GM corps like BT corn, and other GM Round-Up ready crops.

Jaque Pepin said something like, 'for my last meal I would want fresh bread and butter.'  I agree and hope that we will be able to enjoy our breads until our last day.  




Ambimom's picture

Some people do have celiac disease; some people are sensitive to gluten, but the vast majority of us are not.

 I am old enough to remember the oat bran fad of 30 years ago.  Oat bran was the savior of us all; they put it in everything, including potato chips.  Nowadays it is gluten.

It's all silly.  

Les Nightingill's picture
Les Nightingill

Indeed some, very few, are genuinely gluten intolerant. It's a big question as to why, suddenly, it has become so widespread, though.

It is my opinion that the prevalence can be attributed to the nocebo effect in combination with cyberchondria.

I sincerely hope that nobody takes offense at that.

MichaelH's picture

The more others avoid gluten for faddish reasons the more will be available for me.

ccsdg's picture

One of the most no-nonsense people i know has had a lifelong struggle with unexplained symptoms (not IBS). She and one of her daughters stays off gluten not because they call themselves gluten intolerant but because it helps them with their quality of life. Not for lack of trying either - this lady loves sourdough and bakes her own bread, and has experimented with many life and dietary changes before settling on the combination that works for her/her family.

She herself says that it can't be because gluten is inherently bad, and she definitely does not find her 'identity' in being gluten free. (She has much more to do with her time as a mother of multiple kids). But she has seen many doctors and even had surgery to try and deal with some of her issues, and as long as no one seems to be able to fix them why should she not try out various scientifically unproven fads in case they work?

ericreed's picture

A fairly recent study suggests fermentable, oligo-, di-, monosaccharides, and polyols might be the real culprit in NCGS. Which could also explain why long fermented sourdoughs are reportedly tolerated by some people who believe themselves gluten sensitive.

superreader's picture

This study is in the news a lot lately but it's too small (only 35 folks) and poorly designed (only a week in between food trials when it usually takes several weeks to 6 months for gluten to clear the system) to give us much in the way of answers, as its authors admit. Further, the FODMAP digesting enzymes are manufactured in the gut, most near the villi tips. When the villi are damaged by gluten (or anything else) the enzymes can't be produced, so people with gluten & other gut problems often have other food intolerances & must take enzymes to cope with other foods or avoid them entirely. Ergo, if there are FODMAP issues that doesn't disprove gluten sensitivity, it just confirms the additional food group digestion issues already found by other researchers.

CatPoet's picture

Well  they have also proven that people today eat  way more fiber then the body can handle to stay healthy which has the effect   of bloating and tummy ache. So when they stop eating gluten off course the problem goes away, even if it wasnt the gluten that was the problem.

David Esq.'s picture
David Esq.

I have never heard it said that people generally ate more fibet than needed and always assumes it was the other way around. 

dabrownman's picture

65% of Americans are overweight to obese they have to eating too much of something - I'm thinking it is too much fat, sugar. processed foods, carbohydrates and faddish supposedly healthy food supplements like green slime vitamix, raw eggs and whey protein blender drinks.  Thank God the eating of Chinese Dog Jerky never caught on and only their dog died:-)  Poor things, they are probably the same people whose last dog died eating Chinese dog food additives.

After being in the food business and seeing the all the food fads weak minded and easily fooled people have gone for over the years, I think anything is possible and that eventually Chinese Dog Jerky will be all the rage but it will have a warning label that says - Remember what happened last 2 times?.  There is always someone willing to separate them from their money - with the easy fix. 

Heck even Bill O'Rielly is on the bandwagon but has taken it a step further.  He has banned all wheat from his diet but not other grains with gluten it seems - never mentions the other grains with gluten..  He says it changed his life completely for the better - his conversion will most likely make him a billionaire:-)

Being a lilibertarian, I personally could care less what people do but it sure is fun to watch them make fools of themselves.  It's Friday and time to get ready for this weeks bake - its not gluten free but would be if I was celiac.

CatPoet's picture

When people want to eat healthy they tend to go overboard and eat too much of the "healthy" stuff.  It most often these people who later remove gluten and starts to feel better and then thinks Oh I was gluten intolerant when itwas really fiber that caused the problem.

I used to be bloated and I used to be very ill, until my doctor found out that I cant have   too much of labrotory foods and my body do not like  bamboo or sugar beet fibers   added to foods just to make then healthier.  

This has  caused my gut to react  to even rye, I can have a little but I cant eat the amount of rye I used to.  Which is sad since  rye is such a common thing in bread and some cookies.

Wild-Yeast's picture

1 person in 133 suffers from gluten sensitivity - according to the internet. So it must be true...,

Has it occurred to anyone that the internet has allowed a small proportion of people suffering from hypochondria as being largely responsible for spreading a disproportionate amount of paranoia over a common food item?

I have and find it entertaining to watch - what else can one do when such a mania is in full bloom?

The Wall Street Journal recently published a piece noting that ""Saturated fat does not cause heart disease"- or so concluded a big study published in March in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine". The article goes on to say "Our distrust of saturated fat can be traced back to the 1950s, to a man named Ancel Benjamin Keys, a scientist at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Keys was formidably persuasive and, through sheer force of will, rose to the top of the nutrition world - even gracing the cover of Time magazine for relentlessly championing the idea that saturated fats raise cholesterol and, as a result, cause heart attacks".

It turns out the good Doctor Keys fudged much of the data to fit his conclusions. American's were ripe for this new war against heart disease which wasn't really a problem three decades back - have a problem? Find something to blame and promote the hell out it, It's the American way. 

Kurt Vonnegut had the perfect saying for this condition, "And so it goes" which I think sums up this current war against carbohydrates and bread. Besides, as every chef knows, there's no substitute for butter.

Que sais-je?