Rye Bread

[EMMETT]

I SEEM TO BE ABLE TO HANDLE RYE BREAD WITHOUT TROUBLE. I DO LOOK FOR RYE FLOUR ON THE BREAD BECAUSE SOME RYE BREADS CONTAIN HI GLUTEN FLOUR. DOES ANYONE HAVE THE EXPERIENCE OF BEING TOLERANT OF CERTAIN FOOODS WHICH WERE THOUGHT TO BE OFF-LIMITS?

[Fiddle-Faddle]

Well, the current wisdom is that rye, and barley contain gluten and are off-limits, as you say.

You do raise a good question. Corn has gluten,too, I believe--at least, I see "corn gluten" on ingredient lists occasionally, yet it does not seem to be a problem for most celiacs, though many have reported developing an intolerance to corn as well as to gluten.

Some celiacs have reported that they had able to tolerate sourdough bread (made with regular flour), and others report that they had not had problems with spelt.

Perhaps these people have a wheat-specific allergy rather than what is believed to be the standard definition of celiac? Or perhaps celiac is different than what we believe?

I have long wondered if the current understanding of celiac is either inaccurate or incomplete or both. There is an awful lot of debate over the difference between gluten intolerance and celiac, but the only officially "acceptable" diagnosis of celiac is via intestinal biopsy--which itself has an extremely high false negative rate unless the villi are uniformly severely damaged.

There are also people with NO visible intestinal damage who have active celiac in the form of DH (though most DH sufferers probably do have some intestinal damage). Genetic testing is not an accurate diagnostic tool, as some people with biopsy-diagnosed celiac do not have any of the genes that mark a predisposition to celiac.

Canadian Karen posted a fascinating article a while back on the DNA of wheat--the wheat grown today, that has been genetically modified over the last couple of hundred years to have more gluten. Here is the article:

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF WHEAT

"The Roman Empire was built on Egyptian wheat, which they called "korn". It was Einkorn, which is the ancestor of modern wheats. (In Latin, this was the earliest form of Triticum, not to be confused with what we call "corn", which is Zea.)

It had two sets of chromosomes like human beings and is described as 2N or diploid. There were also some naturally occurring wheat that had four sets of chromosomes, or 4N or tetraploid. This was the wheat that the Roman Emperor, Eqyptian pharoahs and Christ were eating.

But what is on our table has been selectively bred over time to increase the gluten content for baking or pasta-making. Most are hexaploid, octoploid, double hexaploid, or hexaploid-octoploid hybrids. This means that they have 6, 8, 12, or more sets of chromosomes. Some of this extra DNA is coding for amino acid sequences that human beings cannot break down, including a 33-amino acid sequence named 33-MER. This 33-MER is what is causing the problem for celiac. Our immune systems are attacking this chain as though it were an invader or parasite. But this sequence is also similar to human tissue, and this inflammation can progress into an auto-immune disease. This auto-immune phase is really damaging, and largely incurable. Control is the only treatment, and life-long gluten free diet is the only control."

I wouldn't go out and eat rye bread or sourdough at this point, though, even if you don't have obvious symptoms. Heck, I don't even eat oats, and Scott has an article on celiac.com that says that studies show that oats do NOT do damage to celiacs. I am too afraid of developing still more autoimmune disorders. I will never forget that miserable feeling of being severely allergic to my own skin; I never want to go through that or anything like that again. And I know too many people with fibromyalgia, lupus, MS, RA, and other similarly gluten-induced or gluten-exacerbated illnesses to feel that eating a piece of bread is worth that kind of risk.

But I think we SHOULD be asking questions like this, and keep asking them until (decades later) more studies are done, and we know more than we do today.

[bluejeangirl]

Rye flour has gluten but it's low in gluten. Not nearly as much as wheat. Most rye breads in the store will have wheat flour in them to get a better rise. They are selling a sour dough german rye bread in our local health food store right now. It does look good so I bought it for my husband. He loves it. The other thing I know about rye is that its a hearty grain and can grow under the toughest conditions. And for some reason its suseptable to mold.

Gail

[kenlove]

Hi

Is there a book or souce that this is from? Would love to share the info and attribute it

thanks

Ken

--

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF WHEAT

"The Roman Empire was built on Egyptian wheat, which they called "korn". It was Einkorn, which is the ancestor of modern wheats. (In Latin, this was the earliest form of Triticum, not to be confused with what we call "corn", which is Zea.)

It had two sets of chromosomes like human beings and is described as 2N or diploid. There were also some naturally occurring wheat that had four sets of chromosomes, or 4N or tetraploid. This was the wheat that the Roman Emperor, Eqyptian pharoahs and Christ were eating.

But what is on our table has been selectively bred over time to increase the gluten content for baking or pasta-making. Most are hexaploid, octoploid, double hexaploid, or hexaploid-octoploid hybrids. This means that they have 6, 8, 12, or more sets of chromosomes. Some of this extra DNA is coding for amino acid sequences that human beings cannot break down, including a 33-amino acid sequence named 33-MER. This 33-MER is what is causing the problem for celiac. Our immune systems are attacking this chain as though it were an invader or parasite. But this sequence is also similar to human tissue, and this inflammation can progress into an auto-immune disease. This auto-immune phase is really damaging, and largely incurable. Control is the only treatment, and life-long gluten free diet is the only control."

[Fiddle-Faddle]

It was originally in a thread from back in 2005. Here is the link to that thread: Open Original Shared Link

THere is a link listed for www.encyclopedia.family. somethingorother, but I couldn't make that link work.