Should I avoid foods with gluten?
For many reasons, gluten has become a ubiquitous food topic of discussion in recent years.
The main reason for that is the constant rise of gluten allergy (autoimmune celiac disease) and gluten intolerance.
In addition, some people started to claim to be sensitive to gluten and felt better when adopting a gluten-free diet.
On top of that, many unscrupulous people seized the opportunity to turn gluten into the “cause of all diseases,” making the gluten-free diet an excellent marketing tool to sell more of their programs, diets, and coaching.
On a larger level, the response from the food industry did not take long…
In only a couple of years, gluten-free products literally exploded, flooding the food market from the gigantic supermarket all the way to the tiny healthy food shop.
Inevitably, controversy and information on the subject exploded too, so much so that today, many people don’t really know what to believe anymore.
But have you noticed that 30 years ago, nobody talked about gluten?
And now, suddenly, it has become a significant problem?
What happened there? Should we not focus first on understanding why gluten was not a problem for thousands of years when humans ate gluten just fine?
It is incredible to see how people can forget so easily.
By stopping to hype ourselves and taking a step back, the answer is pretty obvious.
The real problem with foods with gluten is not gluten
In fact, the problem is not gluten at all but the grains that contain it.
If we take the example of wheat, the primary gluten-containing cereal, today’s wheat has nothing to do with the wheat of old or the first domesticated wheat, called small spelt or einkorn.
Let’s make a little comparison:
The first “domesticated” wheat, also called small spelt or einkorn:
- Its gluten content is only 7%.
- It contains only 14 chromosomes (against 42 for super X wheat and other current varieties)
- It adapts to arid and relatively poor soils
- It does not need fertilizers and resists diseases
- Its nutritive contributions are excellent, but its bread-making is delicate
The current wheat average:
- Their gluten content can reach 20%.
- They contain about 42 chromosomes (which makes them indigestible and unknown to our enzymes)
- Require richer soils and more water
- Are more susceptible to disease
- Their nutrient intake is poorer, but their bread-making is much easier
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But we did not obtain such a different composition of wheat from one day to another.
Mankind has been selecting wheat species for a very long time in the hope of obtaining better wheat that is more resistant to disease and profitable, therefore rich in gluten, to make bread more easily.
So why the sudden explosion of gluten allergy and intolerance?
Simply because a couple of decades ago, the industrialization of agriculture hugely accelerated this selection process and definitely turned wheat into a real digestive poison.
Worse, the big industrial food companies flooded the market by incorporating gluten inside almost all foods as wheat flour or simply added gluten.
It was to be expected that a cheap sticky and elastic material such as gluten would be added everywhere, and sadly this is exactly what happened…
List of foods containing gluten
Here is an example on how the big industrial food companies have flooded the food market by adding gluten everywhere. The below list are processed foods that often contain gluten:
- Beer, ale, porter, stout (usually contain barley)
- Breads
- Bulgur wheat
- Cakes and pies
- Candies
- Cereals
- Communion wafers
- Cookies and crackers
- Croutons
- French fries
- Gravies
- Imitation meat or seafood
- Malt, malt flavoring and other malt products (barley)
- Matzo
- Pastas
- Hot dogs and processed lunch meats
- Salad dressings
- Sauces, including soy sauce (wheat)
- Seasoned rice mixes
- Seasoned snack foods, such as potato and tortilla chips
- Self-basting poultry
- Soups, bouillon or soup mixes
Therefore, to come back to the initial question, the question should not be: should we avoid foods with gluten, but should we prefer gluten-free cereals or not?
And the answer is yes, definitely because cereals with gluten have been among the most genetically selected to obtain a better yield and to increase their gluten content, making them more and more problematic for our organisms.
Cereals with gluten
Here is a list of the cereals with gluten:
- Wheat
- Rye
- Barley
- Oats
- Kamut
- Spelt
- Small spelt
Gluten-free cereals
If you want to prefer gluten-free cereals to cereals with gluten, it is not very hard, as many alternatives are available.
Here is a list of gluten-free cereals:
- Rice
- Corn
- Millet
- Sorghum
- Teff
- Fonio
For pasta lovers, we don’t recommend rice pasta as rice is, in our opinion, not suited for making pasta. Rice pasta tends to have a glue texture (especially when making spaghetti) that doesn’t resemble at all classical wheat pasta on top of not tasting very good.
For pasta lovers, we recommend corn pasta that has a wonderful texture, tastes great and looks beautiful.
Gluten intolerance solutions
If you suffer from celiac disease (allergic to gluten) you need to completely ban gluten from your diet. But if you suffer from a gluten intolerance, then the priority, has for all types of food intolerance, is not to remove the food your are intolerant to but to adopt a healthy diet and avoid foods with gluten.
Want to know how? Check out our articles on the topics or directly subscribe now to access our Ebook: Healthy food: Your Fundamental Right.
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