This website is based ONLY on hard science: Factual information from academically accepted
text books, along with published peer reviewed reports of valid medical research studies.
What is Gluten?
Gluten is a protein in Wheat, Barley or Rye seeds.
For some people it is toxic, and a potent carcinogen.
If you have chosen to eliminate these substances from your diet, you are facing
a challenge of daunting proportions. Some people who are doing this experience life-threatening
reactions if they make mistakes. The more fortunate suffer only unpleasant discomfort.
You may be considering doing this for any of a variety of perfectly good reasons,
even without experiencing a reaction that you can attribute to these foodstuffs.
Your reasons are your own.
The job of avoiding gluten is made more difficult by the huge amount ignorance about
many aspects of physics, chemistry and biology in people who ought to know better.
One major area of trouble is food ingredient lists on labels. The worst offender
seems to be "natural flavor" which is all too often made from browned gluten protein.
The food makers are not required to tell you this ugly little fact.
The second major source of trouble is the terrible misconceptions about distillation.
(Read
Distillation.)
Distilled vinegar made from wheat
IS contaminated with wheat protein
fragments too small to be filtered out, yet large enough to be recognizably wheat
gluten protein. Too many people who are advising others hold the misconception that
distilled vinegar is "pure".
And finally, there is strong disagreement over how much you have to get rid of to
be able to claim you have something that is gluten-free. European standards (
Codex Alimentarius
) are much more liberal than many in the US would like. They would allow non-trivial
amounts of gluten in something claimed to be gluten-free. There are MANY people
who suffer serious reactions to foods with less than ten parts per million of gluten.
The only truly safe amount seems to be ZERO. (But there seems to be strong pressure
from the WTO for the USA to adopt it as an internal standard so that we can freely
trade foods!)
Helping all who want to totally eliminate gluten from their diet learn how to do
it. For those who have undertaken gluten-elimination, we hope to provide a significant
amount of information about foods and the various sources of stealth gluten, usually
encountered where it is least expected. For others, we hope to provide a balanced
perspective on a complex topic, with links to credible educational resources, so
that there might be a better understanding of the science and the issues.
No-Gluten is a small, not-for-profit, privately funded, service
organization. The members and contributors have expertise in a variety of relevant
fields, including microbiology, biochemistry, botany, immunology, food technology,
and various other medical and engineering disciplines. All website content is produced
by volunteers. We are not affiliated with any other institutions.
The No-Gluten Website is a work in progress, seeking volunteers to help with content
and web design.
Last modified 6 March 2010.
