Thursday, July 21, 2011

Intolerance for Gluten?

So you think that you have a gluten intolerance? Grains are a major source of digestive problems for millions of people.  This problem is more common in the westernized world that it is in more traditional societies.  What is different?  Their diet is even more grain-based than ours, yet they don’t have anywhere near the digestive problems that we experience every day. There are two main culprits: gluten and phytates.

Gluten everywhere!

What is gluten and why is such a problem?  Why are there so many Americans converting to a gluten-free diet, with this industry grow rapidly?  Gluten is a principle protein component of grains such as wheat  barley,rye, bulgar, durum, kamut, oats, rye, semolina, and spelt. It is what giveselasticity to dough made from the flour of these grains, and allows it rise when a leavening agent is added. It is what provides that chewy texture that we love.  Gluten is also the basis of imitation meats, made to look like chicken, duck, pork or beef.  It porosity enables it to absorb the flavor of the liquid it is cooked in and its texture can be made to feel like meat when eaten.

Unfortunately, some 10-25% of the US population is sensitive to wheat and over 1% (2.2 million) suffers from the more acute celiac disease, and all these numbers are rising.  What is the solution?  First, let’s define the problem- gluten is difficult for the human digestive tract to digest and thus causes major digestive problems. Like most proteins, it is hard to breakdown into amino acids (the building block of all proteins).  As such there are two solutions to this problem.  Take digestive enzymes with meals to help digest gluten or predigest the gluten in the grains before using it in meal preparations. 

Digestive enzymes though somewhat effective can be quite costly.  The alternative of pre-digesting the grains has many advantages.  This is done mainly by soaking the grains for several hours.  This serves to break down or pre-digest the gluten making them much easier to digest.  What this also does is facilitates increased availability of the nutrients and minerals contained in the grains, which are now easier to assimilated and used by the cells in our bodies.  This is the secret that most traditional cultures use to avoid the many digestive problems that plague modern digestion. 

No comments: