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I've heard that the gluten content of what we eat has increased 500% over the years (they add it to everything now). Anyways, check out Spelt, the original bre

I've heard that the gluten content of what we eat has increased 500% over the years (they add it to everything now). Anyways, check out Spelt, the original bread - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelt I don't do well with non-white breads because the bran and germ are kind of hard on your digestive system with respect to producing an allergic reaction. But I have not been able to find Spelt that's not whole-grain (it's white and lite variety seems to be just a reduced bran/germ mixture). But overall, they say Spelt is allot more soluble and digestible than wheat.

sp332 13y ago
But I still don't understand this part of the article: While people with celiac disease genuinely can't process the gluten in wheat, they argue, most people actually can... The result can lead to all kinds of problems in our gut. So, most people handle gluten just fine, but the article is still asserting that it causes gut problems?
- jerf 13y ago
  Celiacs can handle effectively zero gluten. Normal people can handle more than zero, but perhaps not as much as goes into modern bread. With that last sentence we're coming right up on the frontier of science (perhaps surprisingly!), so it's hard to be definitive. But it's not unreasonable to think that quantity matters; it fits the known facts, even if it's not proved. As an example of an alternate hypothesis still on the table, the possibility of an external factor that causes a side effect of increased gluten sensitivity is not something we can currently rule out either. One such specific hypothesis I've read is the sudden and large move towards formula feeding over breast milk in the 70s. And of course there's still one of the Universe's favorite choices, "a little of all of the above".
  - ars 13y ago
    > but perhaps not as much as goes into modern bread. People can handle food made from 100% gluten. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seitan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seitan (fried with some soy sauce it's really delicious).
    - jerf 13y ago
      Some set of people can handle 100% gluten. Since I am not in that set, it clearly is not 100% of the people on Earth. We do not know the distribution of the people in the middle; we have only begun to see that there is even a question to ask. Science is probably going to need a decade or two to work out the answer to that. (Alas, the studies can not be fast, as they must work at human speeds.) Further, we have also established that there is a non-empty set of people who can't handle gluten, and often do not realize it for decades at a time. (Again, I am in that set, so I know it exists. For various reasons this can be a difficult reaction to work out, even when you have full-blast Celiac as I do.) This is not making it any easier to work out the distribution. Some of the people who think they can handle 100% gluten may in fact be having more of a negative reaction than they realize.
      - ars 13y ago
        You implied that "Normal people" can not handle as much gluten as in bread. And I showed you that not only can they handle the small amount in bread, they can handle way more. Now you are trying to back up behind "we don't really know", but actually it's only a minority that have a problem with gluten. The slow experiment has been done: We have been eating gluten for millennia, and only a small number of people had a problem with it. Not eating gluten has become a fad now.
        jerf 13y ago
        No, I'm saying there is a continuum of reactions, and we have a poor picture of it. Establishing that there is a non-zero population on one extreme doesn't establish very much about the distribution. You appear to be arguing something along the line of "A: Gluten-free diets have become a fad B: I think that's silly C: Therefore gluten is safe." Yes, I'm interpolating a bit, but it seems to be your general thrust. There's substantial but non-determinative reasons to believe the picture may be much more complicated than that, particularly the rising incidence of celiac disease (which, as the article says, appears to be a real thing and not merely better detection, which was my most-likely belief until I read this article). We've been eating non-zero amounts of gluten for millenia, but a lot of things have changed in the past few decades; how it is processed, what it is in, even perhaps things like I mentioned in my previous post, such as a generation raised on rather more baby formula than before. We have rather poor data, but something's going on. My position has not changed one whit in this conversation.
- cschmidt 13y ago
  I think the article was trying to say that most people who avoid gluten don't have celiac disease, which is relatively rare. Those people can process the gluten, but it still leads to other gut problems.

sp332 13y ago

But I still don't understand this part of the article: While people with celiac disease genuinely can't process the gluten in wheat, they argue, most people actually can... The result can lead to all kinds of problems in our gut. So, most people handle gluten just fine, but the article is still asserting that it causes gut problems?

jerf 13y ago
Celiacs can handle effectively zero gluten. Normal people can handle more than zero, but perhaps not as much as goes into modern bread. With that last sentence we're coming right up on the frontier of science (perhaps surprisingly!), so it's hard to be definitive. But it's not unreasonable to think that quantity matters; it fits the known facts, even if it's not proved. As an example of an alternate hypothesis still on the table, the possibility of an external factor that causes a side effect of increased gluten sensitivity is not something we can currently rule out either. One such specific hypothesis I've read is the sudden and large move towards formula feeding over breast milk in the 70s. And of course there's still one of the Universe's favorite choices, "a little of all of the above".
- ars 13y ago
  > but perhaps not as much as goes into modern bread. People can handle food made from 100% gluten. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seitan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seitan (fried with some soy sauce it's really delicious).
  - jerf 13y ago
    Some set of people can handle 100% gluten. Since I am not in that set, it clearly is not 100% of the people on Earth. We do not know the distribution of the people in the middle; we have only begun to see that there is even a question to ask. Science is probably going to need a decade or two to work out the answer to that. (Alas, the studies can not be fast, as they must work at human speeds.) Further, we have also established that there is a non-empty set of people who can't handle gluten, and often do not realize it for decades at a time. (Again, I am in that set, so I know it exists. For various reasons this can be a difficult reaction to work out, even when you have full-blast Celiac as I do.) This is not making it any easier to work out the distribution. Some of the people who think they can handle 100% gluten may in fact be having more of a negative reaction than they realize.
    - ars 13y ago
      You implied that "Normal people" can not handle as much gluten as in bread. And I showed you that not only can they handle the small amount in bread, they can handle way more. Now you are trying to back up behind "we don't really know", but actually it's only a minority that have a problem with gluten. The slow experiment has been done: We have been eating gluten for millennia, and only a small number of people had a problem with it. Not eating gluten has become a fad now.
      - jerf 13y ago
        No, I'm saying there is a continuum of reactions, and we have a poor picture of it. Establishing that there is a non-zero population on one extreme doesn't establish very much about the distribution. You appear to be arguing something along the line of "A: Gluten-free diets have become a fad B: I think that's silly C: Therefore gluten is safe." Yes, I'm interpolating a bit, but it seems to be your general thrust. There's substantial but non-determinative reasons to believe the picture may be much more complicated than that, particularly the rising incidence of celiac disease (which, as the article says, appears to be a real thing and not merely better detection, which was my most-likely belief until I read this article). We've been eating non-zero amounts of gluten for millenia, but a lot of things have changed in the past few decades; how it is processed, what it is in, even perhaps things like I mentioned in my previous post, such as a generation raised on rather more baby formula than before. We have rather poor data, but something's going on. My position has not changed one whit in this conversation.
cschmidt 13y ago
I think the article was trying to say that most people who avoid gluten don't have celiac disease, which is relatively rare. Those people can process the gluten, but it still leads to other gut problems.