Gluten: pros and cons

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Gluten (gluten) is found in cereals and is the reason why bread dough becomes viscous and elastic. The quality of the flour is determined by the gluten content. Wheat is easy to grow, nutritious, and is used to make not only pasta, noodles and baked goods, but a wide variety of other foods as well.

People have been using grain for thousands of years, and then suddenly they became almost the most terrible enemy of humanity! How to figure out where the truth is, and where is the next marketing ploy of nutritionists, doctors and corporations?

Should you limit yourself to baked goods and stick to a gluten-free diet? The New Yorker magazine has conducted research on this topic, and we are sharing it with you.

Gluten, gluten(lat. gluten - glue) is a concept that unites a group of storage proteins found in the seeds of cereal plants, especially wheat, rye and barley. The term "gluten" refers to proteins of the fraction of prolamins and glutelins, and part of the gluten falls on the former.

Celiac disease- genetically predisposed intolerance to foods containing gluten; is a form of enteropathy that affects the small intestine in children and adults. According to a February 2005 report by the World Organization of Gastroenterology (WOG-OMGE), the prevalence of celiac disease in healthy adults ranges from about 1 in 100 to 1 in 300 people in most parts of the world. Celiac patients should not eat any kind of wheat, rye or barley. In adults, celiac disease is diagnosed on average 10 years after the first symptoms of the disease appear. Patients with active (clinically significant) celiac disease have an increased risk of death compared to the general population. However, this increased risk of death returns to normal after three to five years of strict adherence to a gluten-free diet.

In the US and Europe, a movement codenamed "Gluten is Death" has been going on for a long time. A huge amount of research has been carried out on this topic, no fewer diets and recommendations have been compiled. Nearly every store has a gluten-free counter next to the diabetic counter: gluten-free breads, gluten-free soups, gluten-free sauces, gluten-free flours, gluten-free cereals, and so on.

Gluten is one of the most commonly consumed proteins in the world. It occurs when two molecules - glutenin and gliadin - combine and form a bond. When you knead the dough, these bonds create an elastic membrane. It is she who gives the bread its slightly viscous texture and allows the chefs to put on a show with pizza dough. Gluten also captures carbon dioxide, which, after it begins to ferment, adds volume to the bread.

People have been eating wheat, and with it gluten, for over 10,000 years. In people with celiac disease - about 1% of the world's population - a very short interaction with gluten can cause a very harsh immune response. This can severely damage the brush-like surface of the small intestine. Therefore, people with this problem should be very vigilant and not only carefully monitor what they eat, but also carefully read the labels of products that are on supermarket shelves - hydrolyzed vegetable protein and malt vinegar are just as dangerous. than wheat bread. Even recycled water from ordinary pasta cooking can lead to serious problems, so restaurants and cafes are as difficult as grocery stores.

And while that same 1% was forced to monitor their diet with manic attentiveness, the other 99% continued to chew rolls carefree until … poison”, which turned this protein into a culinary villain.

Davis believes that even “healthy” whole grains have devastating effects on the human body, whether celiac or healthy. He began to blame gluten for nearly everything from arthritis and asthma to multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia.

David Perlmutter, neuroscientist and author of another publication on the subject called Food and the Brain. What Carbohydrates Do for Health, Thinking, and Memory”(Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar - Your Brain’s Silent Killers) went even further. He believes gluten sensitivity is one of the greatest and most underestimated threats to human health.

Roughly 20 million people say they experience some degree of discomfort after eating foods that contain gluten, and about a third of American adults try to eliminate such foods from their diet. According to one study that tracked restaurant trends, Americans ordered 200 million meals that are free of gluten or wheat.

As a result, this movement gained momentum and almost reached hysteria. Even those who have never had a risk of celiac disease have begun to adhere to a gluten-free diet (do you remember about 1%?). This became another fashion trend, and people immediately picked it up with joy: everyone began to vying with each other to talk about how many years they had not eaten foods with gluten and when they had last ate a piece of biscuit. Just because you don’t have any signs of celiac disease doesn’t mean you don’t have it! What if you belong to this 1% of the “lucky ones”?

There are a huge number of theories on this topic, but none of them gives a clear answer. Some scientists argue that over time, wheat genes became toxic. Davis believes that today's bread and the bread that was on people's tables 50 years ago cannot even be compared. That now this wheat with modified genes. That she is killing people. That about 40% of us can't process gluten properly, and the other 60% are at risk anyway.

And although our diet has changed a lot over the past decades, our genes are still the same as they were thousands of years ago (evolution is a very long process). Our body is simply not able to consume modern foods, stuffed with sugary substance and refined, high-calorie carbohydrates. Moreover, most of the wheat that we eat now turns into white flour, contains a large amount of gluten and very few nutrients. This flour can cause a sharp rise in blood sugar levels, which can eventually lead to diabetes and other chronic diseases.

USDA researcher Donald Kasarda has studied wheat genetics for decades. In a recent study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, he concluded that there is no evidence to indicate an increase in the incidence of gluten intolerance due to changes in wheat breeding.

Joseph A. Murray, professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic and president of the North American Association for the Study of Celiac Disease, also studied wheat genetics. He agreed with Kasarda's findings. In his opinion, the genes of wheat have practically not changed, modern grains do not differ from those harvested from the fields 500 years ago. Moreover, in recent years, the use of wheat products has decreased significantly, rather than increased, so that the problem, in his opinion, has nothing to do with genetics.

But something strange is happening nonetheless, and the number of people with gluten intolerance has quadrupled in the past 60 years. Some researchers believe that previously this problem was not given enough attention and cases of the disease were simply not diagnosed. Other alleged reasons: environmental degradation, modern diet, changes in intestinal microflora and other similar hypotheses. However, so far none of them has been 100% confirmed.

The gluten panic began in 2011 when a group of scientists led by Peter Gibson, professor of gastroenterology at Monash University, discovered through research that gluten can cause gastrointestinal disease even in people who do not have celiac disease.

Gibson published his research in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, however, along with other experts, he urged readers to restrain themselves in interpreting data from such a small study. But who reads the entire text to the end? As a result, millions of Americans, even with mild stomach upsets, suddenly found themselves having problems with gluten tolerance and put themselves on a diet. But what if?

Gibson and his colleagues went further and decided to investigate the effects on the human body of other substances contained in wheat. The subjects were on a special diet that excluded not only gluten, but also these substances: fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols (polyatomic sleeps) - the so-called FODMAP group. Not all carbohydrates contain these substances, but they are found in other foods high in fructose (mango, apples, honey, watermelon), dairy products (milk, ice cream), as well as onions and garlic.

Most people do not have any problems digesting the substances listed above, but these carbohydrates are ostomy, that is, they draw water into the gastrointestinal tract. This, in turn, can lead to abdominal pain, bloating and diarrhea. It turns out that the previous study was not completely correct and did not take into account the effect of these carbohydrates on the human digestive system. The painful symptoms were caused by the digestion of these carbohydrates, not gluten.

In order to get rid of these problems, you need to eliminate foods containing the FODMAP group from the diet, and then gradually return them to the menu and monitor the body's response. But in the end, they decided to blame everything on gluten, since the "gluten-free diet" sounds much better than the "FODMAP diet".

The first study declared gluten the number one enemy; the second study showed that not only gluten, but other substances can cause similar symptoms, and that it is not fatal. In the short span of time that elapsed between these two studies, a huge number of Americans declared war on wheat products and went on a gluten-free diet, and marketers have successfully played on this panic.

Another reason everyone started showing signs of gluten intolerance may be the addition of extra gluten to the flour. That is, not gluten itself, of course, but its constituents (proteins). It turns out that this has long been practiced on an industrial scale in the manufacture of bakery products. It is thanks to this addition that the factory bread turns out to be so fluffy and crispy. Indeed, at home, in order for the bread to turn out to be really tasty, soft inside and crispy outside, you need the right stove and … a very long kneading of the dough, and factories save resources. An extra dose of gluten does a great job of tackling this problem and saves time in the process. But aside from the crispy crust, an increased dose of gluten causes symptoms very similar to celiac disease.

In theory, the bread should contain flour, yeast, salt, sugar, water (sometimes vegetable or butter) and, possibly, some additives in the form of seeds and dried fruits - this is the recipe for homemade bread. But if you take store-bought bread and read what is written on the packaging, in most cases you will see many more ingredients with not very clear chemical names.

Could it be this extra dose of gluten in the most ordinary store-bought bread? Unfortunately, this hypothesis has no one hundred percent confirmation.

And there is no confirmation because in Asia, for example, pure gluten is consumed in food. It has become a substitute for meat and tofu and is called seitan and is served steamed, fried or baked.

So far, the results of no research that deals with gluten have not been 100% confirmed, since the study of various diets and their effects on the body is a very long-term process. In addition, all these recommendations are often too general to really help everyone. How many diets do you know? The Atkins Diet, Paleo Diet, Kremlin Diet, South Beach, Pescetarianism and many others - all of them cannot boast of long-term effects.

People buy books on the newfangled gluten-free diet, read and start diagnosing themselves. And then they decide to skip bread altogether and buy substitute foods that say "gluten-free." But what does this actually mean? Most often, flour is replaced by starches - corn, rice, potato or tapioca, which are refined carbohydrates and which dramatically increase blood sugar levels, like those refined foods that are usually avoided. The result is a strange diet: gluten-free, but high in refined carbs.

So what do you do? Do not succumb to this newfangled movement, do not engage in self-diagnostics, reduce or completely abandon the use of white bread and other baked goods made from white flour and replace them with bread made from wholemeal flour. Another option is to bake the bread yourself using whole grain flour, water, yeast, salt and your hands, which must knead the dough for at least 30 minutes. And then no additional gluten is needed for this bread.