h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So, every foodie restaurant and little food production place in town is yelling about their latest "gluten free" product and I can't help but think . . .

If a place's primary production involves flinging sacks of glutinous flour into a mixer and thereby dusting every surface with white powder, can they really just bring in a box of "gluten free" bread mix, quickly whip up their usual item for the Celiac in the lunch rush but with the bread mix replacing flour and be safe for Celiac sufferers? I've watched a "gluten free" item being produced right beside a couple of dozen gluten filled items all by the same person.

I mean, whole chocolate plants have to be peanut free to make stuff that's safe for the peanut people. Are these small foodie places that are jumping on the gluten free bandwagon endangering Celiac sufferers?

As a Celiac myself I can confirm that even the smallest amount of wheat or barley trace in a non-gluten product can be a problem. We (Celiacs) become even more sensitive to wheat and barley gluten over time as a result of not allowing it in our diets. The only way to avoid gluten contamination is to; 1. Store wheat/barley and non-gluten products separately 2. Use separate cooking utensils and food processors 3. Prepare on separate work areas. There is also the possibility of airborne contamination (flour) therefore separate work areas would be recommended. Hope this helps.

That confirms what I suspected. There's one guy I know who, when asked if he has anything gluten free consistently replies "I can't comfortably say that anything I make is gluten free because I use flour in some of my products." If I were celiac, I don't think I'd trust any of the local places that claim they have one or two gluten free items on the menue.

Thanks, Rod.

Note: I should point out that the above post wass direct from No.1 Son, who is (obviously) celiac.

In my limited experience, quite seriously (he's also diabetic). Dorty, too is celiac (to a lesser degree).
It may be interesting to note that they were both adult before discovering it.
Similarly, Ms Stress has since found that she's more comfortable by taking some precautions.

I can eat almost anything (gourmand rather than gourmet) so I lay responsibility firmly at her door ... I don't think she has a god gene but if so it didn't help much.

LOTS of people have a gluten intolerance but don't have Celiacs. For those people, the small amount of cross contamination is less of a problem. I think the big increase in availability of gluten free products comes from consumer demand from those people.

Ah, now there's interesting, kea. I wasn't aware of a distinction between gluten intolerance and celiac - you wouldn't like to expand a little?


One thing I noticed when coming to NZ was that there was a lot - a lot - more gluten-free stuff, labelled as such, in the shops than there was in UK. Perhaps that's changed in 3+ years?

The thing I'm thinking of is something like, for example, a pie shop that's been baking away for twenty years and suddenly decides to make a "gluten free" pie by replacing the crust in one of their usual pies with something they whip together with some sort of gluten free mix. Meanwhile everyone and everything in that shop are covered with flour, including the new pie.

Seriously, every trendy restaurant and food shop in town is hyping its great new gluten free menu item.

Gluten intolerance is not a severe auto immune reaction in the way coeliac is. Whilst i'm sure some people find gluten makes UBS worse, in some foodie quatures 'gluten free' basically a bit of a fad.

Rod, alot of people find that when they take wheat and other similar grains out of their diet, their health improves. IBS and related bowel conditions that aren't celiacs is one example, but people with things like arthritis also often find relief.

What Z said... glutin is the thing both groups are best made to avoid, but both dont' suffer from the same reactions and illness of the same exposure.

Plus as far as I've notived, recently, its become very* trendy to be glutin intollerent; or at least to avoid glutin like its some kind of fatal drug, even if it isn't for t the individual concerned; I think this posssibly bares some kind of relationship back to this low GI diet stuff that its suddenly all t the fad...

but... more prosacicaly.... naa... it ain't gona be glutcin free if its done in a bakery where everythign else has ordinary flour in it...

Hmm, all noted,

Any comments on 'hard' wheat ?

No idea on hard wheat Rod,

A friend of mine had to try a coeliac diet for a while (part of a series of doctor-led experiments to find out what was wrong with her) and while just experimenting, they didn't ask her to go full-gluten free. I.e. She didn't need to have a separate toaster from the normal household one and so on. Simply cutting out directly forming her meals from gluten-rich foods was enough. So, gluten-free pasta, pizza bases, bread and so on.

One of the most annoying things she found was having to either avoid or ask about every jus, gravy and sauce. It's amazing how many places a) don't know what's in their food (even when the chefs have been asked) and b) don't really care.

Among many sites, this one might be helpful to anyone who doesn't already know about it: http://www.coeliac.org.uk/

Spelt (ancient wheat) and hard wheat are both non-grata for celiacs. The gluten protien is the problem and it is present in both.

Celiacs generally (but not always) cannot eat oats either - despite the fact that they don't contain gluten. Odd.

Gluten can be found in the oddest places too: like woks and deep friers where batter has been (or floured chips have been cooked). One place I went to recently had two friers, one of which was kept gluten free.

So some kitchens really do keep things uncontaminated.

Another thought that gluten was sugar (took a while to discover that the staff didn't know that they didn't know - which could have been bad).

>>Celiacs generally (but not always) cannot eat oats either - despite the fact that they don't contain gluten. Odd.<<
Yeah, odd. Didn't know that - thought Oats were ok.


Hard wheat - I asked 'cos I'm fairly sure I've heard that it's to blame for a rise in incidenc eofCeliac/GlutenFree problems.

Well, if oats are grown anywhere near wheat, the pollen from the wheat can cross-contaminate the growing oats (and wheat pollen, like oat pollen, is designed to 'work' by being blown on the wind, for miles if necessary). The cross-contaminated oat-flowers go on to grow seeds (i.e., the oat that we then eat) which have traces of gluten in. This is because wheat and oats are quite closely related, like horses and donkeys are (and they can reproduce together).

So a coeliac can eat oats if they're certified from a farm a regulation distance from the nearest wheat-field, but such farms are few and far between, and gluten-free oats therefore cost arm, leg, teeth and whiskers. ASK ME HOW I KNOW.

Sorry, bugbear, the way that if you can't eat a common food, all the replacement foods cost eight times as much, so you get punished for your misfortune. GAH.

Ouch!

The more I learn, the more cause for worry

QI informs me that peanuts affect people with nut allergies, even though they are not technically nuts.

So, I asked a question about this subject of the local foodie community on TwitFace -- something along the lines of "how much of the 'gluten free' stuff on local menus is actually free from cross contamination and celiac friendly rather than just 'we didn't knowingly put gluten in the thing but we prepared it in the same kitchen and using the same utensils we use for all our extra stretchy added gluten pizza dough'.


The silence from the local foodie community in response has been deafening. I don't think they know or care about gluten and celiac disease. On one side (the retailers) they just want to market to the latest fad and on the other (the food blogging hipsters) they just want to be seen as at the forefront of the latest fad.

Sad.

Interestingly I was in a Paul cafe in London and asked if the macaroons were gluten free. They said that they were made without gluten but that the kitchen wasn't flour free and refused to sell them to me as gluten free.

As for the Oats, as I understand it they have a protein which is chemically very similar to gluten. In many celiacs, that protien can cause the same response and gluten would. The upshot being that there is more than one type of celiac.