Playing With Your Food: Gluten Free Diet Fad
One of the most fortunate parts of living in a rich and prosperous part of the world is having the luxury of turning down food. In North America, because we have so much food, many have become picky eaters. The better and more available our food becomes it seems the more of our food many refuse to eat. Most of the world might be starving, but many here are obsessed about losing the extra weight he or she might have, or paranoid about some harmless food additive. Much of this nonsense can be seen in diet fads. The latest is the gluten free diet craze.
"Gluten free". One sees these two words a lot today. Everything is "gluten free" it seems; even a pork roast. Ask people who are on gluten free diets what gluten is, and you might get a variety of answers: it is a chemical, it makes people sick, it makes people fat, it causes autism, or cancer, or small pox, or cholera, or rabies, or the plague, or it makes moths to fly into bright lights at night, or deer to run out in front of moving cars. That fact is, most people who eat "gluten free" do not even know what gluten is. Let us find out what gluten is by first looking up the word "gluten" in the dictionary.
gluten |ˈgluːt(ə)n|
noun
a substance present in cereal grains, esp. wheat, that is responsible for the elastic texture of dough. A mixture of two proteins, it causes illness in people with celiac disease.
ORIGIN late 16th cent. (originally denoting protein from animal tissue): via French from Latin, literally ‘glue.’
Oxford Dictionary
Here we see the problem, it is "celiac disease". Some people think gluten causes celiac disease. No, gluten "…causes illness in people with celiac disease.". Celiac disease is hereditary. What is celiac disease?
celiac disease
noun
a disease in which chronic failure to digest food is triggered by hypersensitivity of the small intestine to gluten.
Oxford Ditionary
Since so much of our food is now gluten free, then a lot of people must have celiac disease, right? No, only about 1 percent of the population has celiac disease. For about 99 percent of people gluten is harmless when ingested. Lets now look at some bakery information. This is from a manual for a home bread making machine.
Gluten:
"… a natural protein found in wheat that gives bread its chewy texture and and high volume."
"An elastic substance that is developed from protein when wheat flour is combined with a liquid and then mixed or kneaded."
"Helps give bread its cellular structure"
"Whole wheat flour contains the bran and germ from the wheat kernal. It is lower in gluten..."
If you have experience in baking, you know the importance of gluten when baking bread. The flour is combined with water, and then mixed and kneaded. If you knead the dough by hand, you can feel the gluten forming when the dough starts to feel elastic like. The reason you must knead dough as part of bakery process is it forms gluten. Why is gluten important?
"Kneading the dough makes the gluten elastic enough to form the structure of the bread"
"When the dough has been well-kneaded, the gluten forms thin elastic strands that make up the structure of the bread. As the yeast develops and multiplies, it produces carbon dioxide gas. The gas becomes trapped in the gluten strands, forming bubbles. As these bubbles collect, the dough expands and rises."
"The gluten strands are now strong enough to support the loaf. The yeast will once again produce carbon dioxide gas and the dough will rise to maximum height."
Some people who know little about baking find out very soon when baking gluten free bread that it does not rise like regular bread because there is not enough gluten in the dough.
Hard wheat has a higher gluten content, and so it is usually used for bread making because most bread needs to rise. Whole wheat bread usually needs to have gluten added to the recipe. Soft wheat has a lower gluten content, so it is usually used for pastry.
To reduce gluten in baking, fat (shortening, butter, margarine, vegetable oil) is added. A gluten free diet is likely a higher fat diet.
If you are not allergic to peanuts, you can eat peanuts. If you are not lactose intolerant, you can eat dairy products. If you do not have celiac disease, gluten will not harm you.
Gluten free is not for me.
I have added MSG to this post because MSG is similar to gluten in that many people disapprove of MSG without even knowing what MSG is.
MSG
abbreviation
monosodium glutamate.
monosodium glutamate |mɒnə(ʊ)ˈsəʊdɪəm| (abbr.: MSG)
noun
a compound that occurs naturally as a breakdown product of proteins and is used as a flavor enhancer in food (although itself tasteless).
A traditional ingredient in Asian cooking, it was originally obtained from seaweed but is now mainly made from bean and cereal protein.
Chem. formula: HOOC(CH 2) 2 (NH 2)COONa.
Oxford Dictionary
© Trevor Dailey
References:
National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse (NDDIC)