gfp

OK spoiler time (not really)

They go through the hatch nad through a series of tunnels and end up in the set of Prison Break, meanwhile the cast of prison break end up on the beach ... and work on their tans.

I am in linguistics, and I definitely have to disagree that you can have strong grammar but be unable to express yourself, or that native speakers do not know their own language.

I think its a question of what is appropriate.

I just wrote a letter to my lawyer, its in passe simple and bears little relation to a spoken letter however I often hear native French people misusing tense, especially the subjonctifs.

Any french speakers I have a slightly crude joke, actually it was a comeback last night when some guy grabbed my ass in a bar! (OK its sexist too)

J'ai dit, « tu prends la bouteille par la cou et tu peut prendre les moufs par les culs mais tu ne jamais prendre l'homme ni par la cou ni par le cul »

The part of the brain that controls language acquisition and use is different from the part employed in memorizing rules and lists of vocabulary of a foreign language.

I think those two must be seperate as well..... seriously I have never actually made any effort to learn French vocabulary, I just read books and pick up the vocab or do cross-words etc. I have never picked up a vocabulary list yet I know probably over 90% of the words in a mini dictionary. (I know this because any time I do need a dictionary the word I want is not in.... yesterday it was houlette - a shepards crook and the damned mini-dictionary in the bar didn't have it - so I was unable to complete the crossword ... AHHHHHH.

It is certainly possible to be able to read and write fluently while having neither listening comprehension - at least given time for critical analysis - nor ability to speak. How would you classify the language ability of a person like this, compared with a native speaker who is illiterate?

Good question....

eleep? (did you meet yet?) Casey (Karen) speaks much better French than I do but she specialises in 13C French literature and as she gets progressively drunker she slips further into 13C French....with which she is most comfortable....

The dialect of English that we speak is a different one than that which is written, which has prescriptive/proscriptive (learned) rules rather than intuitive (acquired) ones. It seems they barely teach reading or writing in school nowadays, so I am always pleasantly surprised to see students able to express themselves coherently.

Yes, and I should be grateful, I suppose that I can express myself clearly in at least one language but I find it irksome that whenever a "professional" looks over my writing they completely miss the content and just point out gramattical errors. I mean, I don't even understand the WORD grammar checker when it tells me something is wrong ...

A have a friend teaches English at two American universities in Paris and he often bounces tests off me. I actually do very well (considering but not 100%) but I am completely unable to say why a certain construct is correct.

If you feel the need to express yourself verbally in Latin or Spanish, you should look into Open Original Shared Link. Their programs work.

Yes I dined with a friend yesterday who speaks flawless French, Italian and German including several regional dialects to the point a Bavarian does not know he isn't Bavarian or a Sicilian would not know he's not Sicilian. He also speaks Spanish rather well but with a strong Mexican accent and therefore doesn't count Spanish but is currently learning Turkish.

He recommended the Rosetta Stone series as well (I keep meaning to learn better Italian, its embarassingly bad). I used the real old stuff they did about 10yrs ago when I had to learn Russian.

I assume then that you are no Liberace?

Well....hard question. I had perfect pitch as a child but an accident with a matchstick kinda knocked that on the head... (please don't make me explain its so embarassing) and I really wanted to learn an instrument but ... well never actually did. I did try the guitar ... but I never really put in the effort nor bothered to restring it left handed ... so my musical skills are somewhat limited! I can listen to something and actually pick it out on a piano but that's about it!

Alfred obviously has a vested interest in celiac disease ever since he burned the cakes....

(if anyone doesn't get it its British history)

I wouldn't do that, I heard latin is dropping out of style

Riceguy is correct, if its the hummous its either you have another allergy perhaps.(wouldn't be my first guess).. or just that brand or it has gone off. (more later)

Its also ridiculously easy to make your own...no actual cooking

If you buy tinned chick peas (just water and salt added) you can make hummous in seconds in a processor or better still a hand held whisk/processor.

Its just chick peas, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice

There are 101 different variations ... the most common being bi-tahini, literally with tahini which is just ground sesame seeds and oil.... but adding tahini makes it go off very quickly....(literally in a day) and its a specific bacteria that happens with sesame. This could be the cause of your problems.

When I make my own I usually cheat and add sesame oil.... 1/2 teaspoon max per cup of chick peas...

you can also add cumin, coriander and grilled red pepper for instance in different varaitions.... non of these take more than a minute or so to prepare unless you count grilling peppers or sesame seeds ....

If you have something else on the grill that has gluten, you do not want to use the same utensils or cook it in the same spot where they might touch. If the grill is contaminated by gluten, you want to be sure it's burnt off really good. I use gluten-free spices, but if you're using something with gluten, it is a concern. You can always cook the gluten-free food on a piece of foil to be safe, but be sure you're not sprinkling any gluten on it.

Watch out for things like sausages that spit as well.....

I was going to mention the toaster too.

Let's just hope it's not "gfp: in the bathroom again"

Let's not I'm likely to trip up over the boxes stacked in the hallway outside the bathroom....full of pans and kitchen stuff BUT ITS FINISHED ... looks much better than it did before the fire as well.

Yes, it is difficult teaching English and reading on the Internet, but I just have to take my teacher hat off when I'm surfing the web. I'm relieved when my students' errors aren't quite as egregious as some of the things that I read on medical websites. GFP--I'm sorry I didn't see the post sooner. I was actually going to suggest Eats Shoots, and Leaves--I'm not sure what you mean by errors in the preface. I found no errors in the American preface. In fact, I recommend the book to my students who have difficulty with grammar, and then I just point out the differences between British and American grammar.

I agree with GFP's statement about foreign languages--I know that my Spanish and Latin grammar is strong, but my ability to express myself verbally in those languages is weak. In addition, my non-native students often have better English grammar skills than my native speakers because they take the time to learn the intricacies of the rules (they just lack the vocab that comes naturally to their classmates).

I already gave the book back but I can take another look.

I often win bets with French people about correct grammatical usage, luckily in French the rules are very precise and legally defined by the Acadamie Francaise but increasingly the language is being eroded and I find myself in a increasingly small group of people using past historic and subjonctive imparfait.... even most young French people misuse the subjunctive.

edits: Don't remember exactly what offended me, at the time but here is what someone else thinks.

Open Original Shared Link

The first punctuation mistake in “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” (Gotham; $17.50), by Lynne Truss, a British writer, appears in the dedication, where a nonrestrictive clause is not preceded by a comma.

...

The foreword, by Frank McCourt, contains another comma-free nonrestrictive clause (“I feel no such sympathy for the manager of my local supermarket who must have a cellarful of apostrophes he doesn’t know what to do with”) and a superfluous ellipsis. The preface, by Truss, includes a misplaced apostrophe (“printers’ marks”) and two misused semicolons: one that separates unpunctuated items in a list and one that sets off a dependent clause. About half the semicolons in the rest of the book are either unnecessary or ungrammatical, and the comma is deployed as the mood strikes.

If you're interested I can ask a friend to run a highlighter over the first few pages at dinner tonight, although he has probably got notes in the margins already if he kept his copy. He may have used it as a firelighter to get anything Dan Brown ever wrote to dissapear....

.. and yes I have notes on the first 25% or so of The Dan Vinci Code after which I stopped making notes.

and the comma is deployed as the mood strikes

Wow does this sum up Dan and his writing style...

"and he walked across the road, and he found a clue, he looked at the stunning <whatever her name was> and they solved the clue and then they needed a jet and luckily the bad guy just happened to have one pre-fueled and it was very exciting and lots of things happened."

Well just got one they promise is only herbs and salt....

No kitchen at the moment ......

Honestly, its a crapshoot..... I know they mean that but I have no idea what else they touched or if they had other things in the rotiserrie (ack can't think in English now) that might have gluten so ...........

I'll report back tomorrow... if Im quiet or someone starts a thread about "gfp: not so mellow anymore" then you know why

How true! The internet has helped in totally butchering the english language......

Karen

LOL so true..... but I'm not sure its actually any worse than walking into a bookshop.

A friend who is an editor lent (lended ) me her copy of Eats shoots and leaves.... I didn't get past the first 5 pages of forward and preface when even I counted several grammatical errors. I realise its easier to spot the mistakes made by others but come-on ... a zero tolerance approach to grammar with errors in the preface?

I think Olvia Newton John have one for a while?

she was also famous ..... for a while

Thanks NicoleAJ, I had unfortunately already sent the eMail.

I am however going to take what you corrected and see if I understand why!

Lonewolf and Nicole.... many thanks, I'm extremely self concsious about my wirtten English, perhaps overly so but writing on boards such as this does nothing to help.

I just have a complete mental block with English grammar, I can't understand the language of the rules, let alone what they mean, I just blank it out and it doesn't go in.

Unfortunately, I pretty much missed the basics ... and I have tried several times to self educate but I always end up just giving up. This is without adding the additional problem of influence of non mother tongue languages, for instance I just used a reflexive verb needlessly because this would be reflexive in French. It is perhaps a sad state of affairs that my knowledge of French grammar is better than my English even though my oral French and self expression sucks.

Yesterday was a hard day, I had a 3 page legal letter to write in French... You wouldn't believe how long that took!

Any tips on how to improve my English?

It doesn't help being dyslexic but I am obviously not in such dire need I could take advantage of adult literacy classes although I am aware that my fundamental problems actually stem from this level.

I could read and write perfectly well before school and then they introduced a phoenetic system and I never accepted it. That is perhaps an understatement I absolutely refused to adopt it and so all my papers came back as fails because I refused to use the phoenetic system they invented. Thus I ended up in the remedial set where basic grammar was considered beyond us.

Can I just answer a different way?

What is fair to your family is to have as fit and healthy mom superachiever as possible!

You define your own risks but having any gluten in the house is a risk.....

This sounds paranoid but consider hoovering and how it blows everything into the air....if it didn't they wouldn't have hypoallergenic bags for dust mites.

Sharing pans, dishcloths etc. etc. is just an accident waiting to happen. Sooner or later it will happen however careful you are because we are all just human.

As already said.... any milled flour is just a huge accident blackspot.... its really pretty definitive... shared dishwashers... only yesterday I found some glue in mine... well it wasn't glue it was dissolved rice tagliatelle but... it had fallen into the cutlery part and all the cutlery had it on in obvious amounts but it must have equally been spread across plates and pans.

The sensible thing to do if you have this is to limit it to stuff that is easily rincable.

My gluten-free's mom bought her cheerio's when she was in the US last week ....

She keeps them in a sealed box and when she has them she soaks them... rinces them and uses disposable paper towels to clean them. AFTER they are clean they get run through the dishwasher....

The question of bread.....is a toughy.... I mean I see the point gluten-free bread is yucky and expensive and if hubby needs his sandwiches in all practicality then.... you can really minimise the risk by inverting the gluten free area and have a seperate gluten area with its own knives ... paper towels and all. Wash all gluten stufff seperately....

I think it also depends on the gluten... for instance rice crispies have the horedin malt but its a wash whereas a wheat cereal has .. well little particles that get everywhere....

You misunderstood my observation. What I was saying is that a newbie may ask a question that has a relatively straightforward answer, and several other relative newbies jump in and say, "I'd guess it's..." but their guess is just plain wrong. By the time someone comes in with correct information, they are already being drowned out by the noise level.

I'm sorry to have to agree with that statement.....but its absolutely spot on.

Simple questions getting derailed into philosophical debates... No one calling out people who give out dangerous or uneducated advice...

and I think this is spot on but its a symptom......(I moved that bit from the end of the quote)

However, as time as gone on... I've been frustrated with people giving out medical advice when they have no medical background... giving BAD medical advice when they DO have a medical background... "diagnosing" people over the internet... being incredibly paranoid and blaming everything on celiac disease... never weighing the possibility that there's something else going on with their health, or other ppl's health, besides gluten... telling anyone and everyone who comes on the board who is even investigating the slight possibility of being gluten intolerant that they must stop eating all gluten NOW (as if every problem can be traced to celiac disease or gluten intolerance)...

Yes and its all mixed up but the number 1 thing that people seem to miss as noobies after diagnosis is "that they must stop eating all gluten NOW" .... I was guilty of this myself... not deliberatly but through poor or more accurately half hearted research, especially combined with bad advice from my GI... noone told me about hidden gluten .... cross contamination was a far away thought....

I agree with the paranoia part.... BUT I think I know the reason and that is so many of us had peripheral problems that went away with a gluten-free diet. Things we never even thought could be connected..... however (and I think this is the big however) the problem is when you combine misinformation about hidden gluten and the fact many of us had peripheral problems then the best advice most of us can come up with is "Make double sure you're not getting CC or hidden gluten"

In all practicality the ONLY way to do this 100% is to not eat out and only eat fresh food you prepare from scratch.

never weighing the possibility that there's something else going on with their health

I don't think this is quite so bad...I think many people perhaps do.... but there are certainly many of us who do not....

As for philosophical debates on gluten.... I don't see any option.

People regualrly post that "all distilled alcohol is gluten free" .... one thing I am qualified to talk about is distillation ... and i know its not possible to guarantee and end point in complex systems....what you learn in grad school chemistry is an approximation .. it is not real life. When you weigh this with the fact a significant number of people do react then..... we have a philosophical debate.

My philosophy is simple: "If in doubt leave it out!" .. its my daily mantra.

So do I think its whole gluten in vodka.... probably not but do I think there is enough of something (sometimes) for some of us to react YES! So I can't in all honesty just quote high school chemistry and say "all distilled alcohols are safe".... (for a start I know several using non gluten-free colouring's)

Yep--just the cold, hard facts!

You mean the cold hard FAT's...

Wow thank you to all who responded .. I wasn’t expecting so many to actually care.

Firstly GFP.. I am not anorexic nor have I even had an eating disorder..

Cool we can drop that then I just had to check before so it doesn't come up.... so lets bury that and move on...I hope you didn't just go harumppppf and skip the rest of what i wrote

I have thought about stopping the all veggie diet a lot lately and I think ill give it a try real soon. I live with a vegen boyfriend.. I don’t have a problem with eating some chicken and fish now and then but just haven’t recently do to not wanting food to get wasted by me being the only one eating it. I do eat quite a few eggs though, about one every meal to help with some protein.

as for the blood tests on vitamin levels there all fine and im right where I should be.. so the doc says.

The other allergy tests would be the key to finding if I had more problems with rice and soy.. I don’t eat much corn but I want that tested also. Its hard to do so when I have a doctor that’s not cooperating with me on this you know?

Oh.... yes we know! Most of us have been through more MD's than we wish to remember.

I have had MD's say "you can't have that its too rare"... "its a childrends disease" and 101 other excuses.... and some of these after I was officially diagnosed.

Finding the right Dr. is hard (but getting easier slowly) .........

Your obviously really trying on non-vegan already.... eggs should be good .... and do contain all the protein you need. I understand about not wanting to waste food.. do you have a freezer? Perhaps what might help is you can prepare 3-4 portions and freeze some.

One thing I would worry about is getting dependant on any one food. For instance allergy to eggs is not so uncommon and celiacs do tend to have a 'gift' for other food intolerances...

I know what you mean nini about the CC I check and re check everything.. I don’t buy anything new unless I know its safe, I always check online to get complete lists of everything in the ingredients. I checked my make-up and hair stuff too and all are fine.. thankfully!!.. I do take some real consideration the getting some CC from my boyfriend whose a frequent wheat eater.. I try and keep everything disinfected.. using different toasters and anything plastic I have my own. I think its time to get new dishes and pans though just to be sure.

Yeah you really need to really really go paranoid on CC, that's easy...the hard part is getting those who live with to 'play' as well. The problem is people don't see wheat as a poision ... we are not brought up to go "uuugggh wheat.".. so even though people listen to differing amounts actually getting them to think automatically before they put a knife in a jar is really hard. It doesn't mean they don't care they just forget that its just touched gluten. Another thing worth mentioning but its a bit hard to express without sounding pompous (but heck everyone here knows I can be) is that people who are totally vegan often have a different view on food ... that is they have to work a bit harder on picking nutritious food so they look on it a little differently ... so its hard to confer to them that wheat is bad... because they have a mindset that wheat is good..meat is bad....

It doesn't mean they don't accept that for you its bad BUT I think it leaves a kind of nagging in their head.

(I was vegan-lite for 3-4 years pretty much like you ... pretty much at your age as well ... and my girlfriend was the vegan... I just went along with it because I didn't see eating meat as a big deal - in other words I never bought meat but only ate it if I went to peoples houses who served it for me) I was also probably about your weight/height ratio .... hang on I have to do English stones and pounds to pounds ...OK..back with y'all I was 170lbs and 5'10" (and a half) ...

I stayed pretty much this weight until I was diagnosed then went up to about 210lbs and since then I had to loose it and went down to about 180lbs.. (hence kinda podgy piccy since weight always shows on my face first...)

aikiducky I have my b 12 checked all the time and its normal also.. so im not sure what to do... I have had blood tests for just about everything you can think off.. I have about a 12 page list of all the testes I have had.. and still nothing..

I will try cutting out soy and rice and adding more meats.. hopefully it might help me out.. im willing to try anything now to get better morals or not.. health is way more important.

again thanks so very much for your time.. it means a lot!!!

You should try and post anything relevant in the tests.... we have lots of people here who might spot something your MD missed .. especially if you had them over time...

One thing about secondary intolerances is they seem to be less pronounced in many once the gut heals and I think that your problems boil down to one of two things.....

Either you have secondary intolerances (soy would be my favorite culprit from other's but even egg) and the other would be you are somehow getting gluten.

The CC issue is the hardest (actually I just wrote that and thought .... they are both freakin hard) .... but CC is so hard to pin down. Even if you have seperate dishcloths for instance its easy for someone to just pick up the wrong one and then you have it....

Another issue which never seems to resolve is alcohol.... the scientific ins and outs we keep debating but what is apparent is that many of us react to grain alcohol.. despite what Dr's tell us.

im willing to try anything now to get better morals or not.. health is way more important.

Well I have a suggestion.... how about keeping a detailed food diary. If you get a free blog you can give us a link and then we as a group of pretty expert gluten hunters and quite a few other intolerants too can look through and perhaps find something you didn't think of...or often just writing it down helps too.

The other thing is what I tell ALL noobies.... its what I wish I had done to start off but I spent 6 months of wasted time.....

Basically go back to basics.... cut out all allergens and go back to fresh meat/fish and vegetables ...

If your villi are still damaged then give them the best chance to adsorb nutrients and at the same time don't put anything in you that might aggravate them.... be ultra strict... that is no eating out and nothing you even suspect might be contaminated.

Do this for a few weeks and hopefully you see some positive response.

Then very slowly you start adding things back like rice ... spend a week with rice then add another potential allergen like corn.... lentilles, chick peas etc. one by one and give each one a week...

The study, published in the Lancet in 2001, found that mortality in people with celiac disease was most significantly affected by diagnostic delay, pattern of presentation, and adherence to the gluten free diet. A delay in diagnosis of more than one year and a severe presentation of celiac disease at diagnosis doubled the observed deaths during the study. Non-adherence to the gluten-free diet, defined as eating gluten once a month or more, increased the relative risk of death six-fold. These factors were highly statistically significant. There are limitations to this study, however, including the fact that people diagnosed in the 1960’s were more likely to present with a severe case of celiac disease, including intestinal lymphoma.

Alessandro Ventura and colleagues conducted an important study on the presence of autoimmune disorders in people with celiac disease. Published in 1999 in the journal Gastroenterology, these researchers recruited 909 patients with celiac disease, as well as 1268 healthy controls and 163 patients with Crohn’s disease. The results were dramatic, and highly statistically significant.

Ventura found that the risk for developing other autoimmune disorders increased relative to the age of the person with celiac disease at diagnosis. For instance, a child that is 2 years of age has a 5% chance of developing another autoimmune disorder, but a person over 20 years of age at diagnosis has a 34% chance.

Source :

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO CELIAC DISEASE PROGRAM

Open Original Shared Link

Shows how much I know!

So, I guess you're repainting the kitchen?

Yep... covered in it and plaster.... spending half my time replastering and the other half paiting the part where the plaster wasn't damaged...

anyway.. para2 dropped and email sent.

Open Original Shared Link

BALTIMORE, Sept. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Alba Therapeutics Corp. today announced that it had dosed its first patient in a Phase II trial for the treatment of Celiac Disease (celiac disease). In October of last year, the FDA granted "Fast Track" designation to AT-1001, an orally administered zonulin receptor antagonist for treatment of Celiac Disease.

Ursula, the retreat that many Catholics use is the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. This format has been done for years and really is fitting for any Christian since it's scriptural based. Traditionally the retreats went on for 30 days and once each day there was a meditation, which became the focus for the day. For lay people, the retreats today are done over a weekend with about 7 meditations and two talks.

When Catholics do these retreats, they're silent, meaning the participants do not talk, but take the time to focus on God and their own lives. Of course the person leading the meditations talk, and if you go to Mass, spiritual direction and Confession, you talk then, too. I go on one per year and have for 10 years .... though I'm afraid to this year with my new dietary issues ...

Here is a book I've found that has the format for you to do the retreat on your own if you're interested: Open Original Shared Link

Steve, if religion really meant being out there like that, most of us wouldn't be religious either. You have to remember that just because we believe God is perfect, that still doesn't mean those running his Church are. That being said, there is such a thing as exorcism, there is a Catholic priest in every diocese who is the exorcist, but it is a rare thing to be used .... and certainly NOT on someone as holy as Ursula ... In Indianapolis I met the exorcist. A VERY, VERY holy man .... he lived across the street from the state mental hospital and they called him over frequently. Talking to him may even get you to believe. But exorcism is only done in a state of prayer, by a very holy priest ... not as was described at this so called religious retreat that Ursula mentioned.

Carla, that was the sort of retreat I had in mind....

he lived across the street from the state mental hospital

OK Carla ... best to stop before I start thinking about the film!

Okay everyone, this is very strange ... two people from our local celiac group contacted General Mills by phone. They said that they've not changed the formula and that they're trying to get gluten OUT of their products!! They said that Trix and Cocoa Puffs do not have wheat in them and that they have no plans in the future to put wheat in them.

Given how they've responded to us, this is very weird ... unless, thousands of people complained and they're taking it back out of the cereals ... but they claim they never put it back in.

Hate to say this and start another "conspiracy theory" but did they ask permission to record the phone call?

In my yellow pages they are listed under "Grocers" & "Grocers- Ethnic"-- just look for Asian, East or Oriental in the name. Hope you find one, they are a great resource.

AFIAK Rice "spring rolls" are mainly vietnamese and called nems...

Also, you really need to look out for asafetida. Most papadams have it, & it's not gluten-free.

OMG are you sure?

Its part of the same family as parsley....(Apiaceae)

Incidentally and totally off topic the hollow stem is what promethius used to steal the fire from the sun.

I think it looks good--especially the line "the daily life of a coeliac is reduced to an exercise in risk management."

Yeah, I tried but I want to make sure its syntaxically correct. I spent most of my time at school just waiting until I didn't need to hear another grammar rule ever and being told by teachers to concentrate on woodwork and metalworking skills so I'm a bit sensitive about writing to a professional writer.

This might be funny if I was not sitting here right now in coveralls covered in paint! LOL...

ack

Too many GI specialists are still convinced of the thousands of patients they have seen with IBS that none of them had coeliac disease, simple statistics from screening indicate otherwise since even from a random population 1:133 was a misdiagnosed coeliac and when a sample of IBS patients randomly screened the figure is closer to 1:25.

oops also missed

Coeliac is not a fad diet nor a choice, it is something we must live with and public perception plays the biggest role in this.

Open Original Shared Link

My spelling is BRITISH.... its a british paper but any cleaning up of my restricted English appreciated.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Please tell us the problem. For our reference, internally this comment is on the piece titled The poisonous truth about our daily bread by Andrew Whitley starting with

Dear Sir,

I realise that your article was about the “rubbish” added to bread but I find the comments on coeliac disease a rather cheap shot. I realise that a certain artistic license is not only permissible but needed to add interest to stories but in this case I feel it has led and will continue to lead to misconception and ultimately a harder time for Coeliacs and sufferers of Chrons' disease.

Let me explain perhaps as best I can as a non writer. Firstly let me apologise for my poor writing ability and implore that you do not dismiss my comments out of hand because of that. I fully realise that my English is imperfect and painful for someone gifted and educated to read; I ask therefore for a little patience from a professional while I put across my point. My misappropriation of English should not be perceived as a lack of admiration nor appreciation for those who can write as you do; I ask simply that you take what I say without prejudice for my ill-formed English and concentrate instead on my well-formed intent. I may have the literacy and writing ability of a ten year old but I have the scientific mind of a scientific post doctoral researcher.

Let me comment initially overall that your article is certainly well intentioned, of that I have no doubt yet the style and use of facts casts the article into a certain genre before anyone has the chance to read it.

The article casts coeliac in particular as a problem with the quality of bread and while I support wholeheartedly that if I was able to eat bread I would not be choosing a “English white loaf” as my personal vice this is simply not the case and the disease has been to an extent prostituted in order to drive home your already poignant observations. You will by this time have gathered that I am a coeliac and that I am passionate about its public perception, in the same way that from reading your article I can see you have done research and informed yourself.

Perhaps I should abandon syntaxial construction at this point and instead point simply to certain points you raised.

“Coeliac disease now affects one in a 100 people, other wheat intolerances probably more. How did we get here?”

Coeliac has always, or at least in “written history” affected one person in a hundred or more accurately 1:133 within the general European population. We could start written history of the European genotypes perhaps in pre-Hellenistic times but I believe that is simply splitting hairs and Hellenistic Greece and its military based facsimile of Republican Rome is as good a place to start as any. Aretaeus of Cappadocia wrote about coeliac disease in the 1st century A.D. in works which are still extant. The Romans were good record keepers and hence we know exactly how much bread was eaten by the general populace, indeed this figure is so well known that it is successfully used to determine population of a city from its mills and bakeries and inversely to predict a certain city must undiscovered extents because the bakeries can not provide sufficient bread for the known population. We also know the market prices of bread not only in Italy but the differences empire wide. I could expand on this but I fear you would loose interest so suffice it to say the average Roman citizen consumed 2 kilo's of bread per day. We can perhaps halve this figure because of undeclared domestic help but this figure is constant throughout the empire and huge logistical measures ensured this.

In other words coeliac disease is not on an increase due to increased bread consumption, but coeliac diagnosis is increasing due to advances in medicine.

Much as I doubt the additives are healthy one could equally say that bread made with water from lead pipes was also unhealthy.

Coeliac disease is an inherited auto-immune response, specifically in relation to the DQ1 allele which are relatively common in type R haplotypes. Other as yet unmapped genes may also be responsible and this is considered work in progress. One either has or does not have coeliac disease, just as someone is either pregnant or not, there is no such thing as being slightly pregnant, neither can one be slightly coeliac. However the auto-immune response to gluten can be just as different as peoples response to being pregnant, not everyone has morning sickness yet everyone has a different hormonal response. In other words, ones response and symptoms may vary but the underlying cause remains the same, an auto-immune response to gluten or more specifically certain chains within gliadins.

There is of course a plethora of alternative theories on this accompanied by a veritable cornucopia of speculations, there are suggestions that adeno-virus may act as a trigger, that Lymes' disease may also do the same in much the same way as Warren and Mitchel speculated on heliobacter pylori in the case of duodenal ulcers. Any and all of these remain valid yet the best that medical science can say for definite is that zonulin production and its control inter-cellular permeability plays a major role.

In additional to the gastro-intestinal issues coeliacs and gluten-intolerant people face a host of other symptoms. The continued production of antibodies exerts an enormous stress on the thyroid and lymphatic system causing elevated incidence of failure, malfunction and ultimately cancers. Transmission of gliadins and byproductsinto the vascular system are responsible for an increasingly recognised neurological symptoms ranging from various neuropathies (1) to ataxia.(2)

So if you are still reading, let me describe the problems coeliacs face on a daily basis.

By far the most common problem we face every day of our lives is public perception. Coeliac disease is not a health fad nor a “malade du jour” regardless of if a gluten free diet is considered chic or fun. A single crumb of gluten will make us ill for 6-8 weeks (3)

Every-time we eat out and as a journalist you must understand this is not always through choice but part of work we have to cope with servers and chef's who think brushing of the crumbs is OK, that you can pick out the croûtons or fry in the same oil. Not only is it not OK, it is magnitudes of gluten above what is needed. I could write 3 pages of everyday cross contamination, indeed I have previously in catering guides but I can sum it up in a sentence. No means no... and gluten free means gluten free.

I could similarly rant for a further 3 pages on “hidden gluten” that is gluten used in places it is not expected and this itself relates directly for instance to your reference to transglutinamase. Equally I could point out that every bottle of soy sauce is made with wheat in every restaurant and soy sauce is not even scratching the barrel with where the food industry finds uses for wheat derivatives. Indeed the EU has a prize each year for the most inventive use of wheat byproducts in food, I'm sure in there somewhere is a story. I can point you to using wheat derived dextrines to make sliced meat stick together or simply the use of wheat flour as a filler in products to bulk them out or prevent frozen chips from sticking together but these are simply the tip of a huge iceberg which is inexorably and mercilessly stream-rolling or should I say ploughing its way through the food industry.

When these two items; cross contamination and hidden gluten are put together the daily life of a coeliac is reduced to an exercise in risk management.

The UK has two groups of coeliac, the largest by far being those who are undiagnosed and the medical profession possesses an inertia which requires time and energy to change. Too many GP's still regard coeliac as a rare disease and others as a childhood disease and sadly this even extends to specialists in gastro-enterology. Too many GI specialists are still convinced of the thousands of patients they have seen with IBS that none of them had coeliac disease, simple statistics from screening indicate otherwise since even from a random population 1:133 was a misdiagnosed coeliac and when looks at a sample of IBS patients randomly screened the figure is closer to 1:25.

(1)Open Original Shared Link

(2)Open Original Shared Link

(3)Open Original Shared Link

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I would however tend to agree that GFP's thoughts about soy and a vegetarian diet is very true. I was a vegetarian for a while and while I wasn't underweight, I was severely malnourished. I thought if I ate "healthy" that I was doing ok. But my Dr.s told my husband to "go buy her a steak and make her eat it"... Not telling you to give up vegetarianism, but to consider if this is why you are still having issues. I DID find some TVP yesterday that was labeled gluten-free. I think it was either Bob's Red Mill or Arrowhead Mills. Either way it was labeled gluten-free. But if soy is also a problem for you, you might have to consider another way to get your protein.

My issue with soy is its another closely linked allergen ....my mother who was much older than myself when diagnosed had problems from day 1.... I have never experienced any to my knowledge but I just think adding something that affects many coelaics into my diet as a subsitute is generally asking for trouble....

My girlfriend bought me some gluten-free mixed flour for instance with soy in.... I used it but I use it very occasisionally...I know many coelaics do have problems so I think its something if I push it I might also have problems...

Sorry this just bears repeating so many times.....

Also, what he said about hidden glutens and cross contamination is VERY important.

and I'm not anti-vegetarian...I just think some people are less suited than others and the work required to actually balance a vegetarian diet is hard enough already but add soy and grains to the equation and its even harder. I'm not saying its impossible, its not but many newly diagnosed peple find being gluten-free hard enough at first without adding complications....