Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonmales | Hacker News Reader

I'm generally convinced that gluten is bad is everyone, or more so humans are not designed to digest it.

But replacing one processed ingredient with another, doesn't make much difference.

FWIW, some recent research suggests that it's fructans, rather than gluten, which are the actual cause of gastrointestinal problems in non-coeliac gluten sensitivity[0].

However, if you're looking for a purely diet-based solution to GI problems, given that cutting gluten out of your diet will also cut out fructans, then you might as well go ahead with that. Especially as people serving you food will know what you're talking about, as opposed to going "huh?" if you start asking about their fructan-free offerings.

OTOH, if we try to deglutenate[1] foods in some way, or develop some kind of enzyme in pill form (glutase?)[1], than that's not going to help people who are actually fructan-sensitive rather than gluten-sensitive.

[0] http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-balanced-look-at-glute...

[1] Is this a word?

[2] cf. lactase

Frustans is new to me.

Question 1: Why are you convinced? Apart from celiac disease, evidence suggests that there is no such thing as "gluten intolerance", let alone universal gluten intolerance.

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/05/gluten_sensitiv...

Question 2: Why do you call gluten "processed"? It is a naturally occurring compound in wheat, and has been an essential part of bread for thousands of years.

Regarding point 1 there: "Instead, as RCS reported last week, FODMAPS are a far more likely cause of the gastrointestinal problems attributed to gluten intolerance."

FODMAPS which...includes wheat. So the people who thought they had a gluten intolerance actually had a wider food issue which included wheat as one of the triggers.

Re Question 2: Wheat is processed into flour, which has gluten. No one eats wheat raw.

The "processing" of wheat is simply grinding it, in a mill[0]. The ears are literally just physically broken down into small pieces. No chemicals are added, and ideally no chemical reactions happen within the wheat/flour. Certainly gluten is not a product of the milling process; it is a protein that exists in the original ears of wheat[1].

Also, the process of milling cannot be described as cooking by any reasonable defintion of the word, so I'm not sure what you mean by wheat being "raw" in a way that flour is not. Unless you count finely chopped ingredients as no longer being "raw".

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gristmill

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat

You make the point better than I did.

I would also add that, by this definition, any animal product eaten is processed - even eggs - which are cracked and then usually cooked. Ground beef is extremely processed - having been butchered and then fed through a grinder.

You can theoretically grow your own wheat and grind your own flour. If you can do it yourself without a food factory and secret ingredients, then I don't think it fits any reasonable definition of 'processed'.

Cool I see your point.

In my mind grinding is processing. It is being processed so we can make something something else out of it. Would you eat it on its own?

I broadly wipe that anything that can't be done with ones hands is processed. But that opens the question if cooking meat is considered processing.

I can't see prehistoric man grinding wheat to make a meal.

Wheat is used in many recipes without being ground into flour. See cracked wheat or bulgar wheat for examples.

Cooking meat causes chemical changes - maillard reaction. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction

Many low tech cultures use carbs obtained from crushing or pulping grains. The reason they don't use wheat is not because of the need for grinding but because of the need for agriculture.

> No chemicals are added

To be pedantic, chemicals are added to fortified and enriched flour... perfectly harmless chemicals that were lost in the milling process.

Being even more pedantic, fortified and enriched flour is normally created because the base product was bleached, not because of milling.

The removal of the wheat germ is the primary reason for re-adding the nutrients, without the germ, and the bran, you just have a large amount of starch in the endosperm.

Well aware that gluten is not a product of the milling process. Never said that either.

You have repeatedly called flour a processed ingredient; and linked that processing to gluten.

It's not surprising that people think you're claiming that milling flour is "processing" it, or that you think gluten is a result of whatever people are doing to flour.

Gluten isn't a "processed ingredient." Its naturally found in wheat and grains, and humans have been eating it for thousands of years with bread being a staple food for many cultures.

Celiac disease, which prevents a small portion of the population, seem to be the only people who outright need to avoid gluten to live - AFAIK there are no studies showing gluten free diets is actually healthier on a while for humans.

Indirectly I'm referring to flour as the processed ingredient.

My assumption is that you cannot make bread without milling the wheat to produce flour. Thus processed.

I believe you are correct there are no hard studies. But I did scan a report that said removing gluten from schizophrenic patient diets reduce symptoms.

Wheat is one of the top three plant based foods in the world, and is the largest non-animal source of protein in the world diet. The cultivation of wheat, and the ability to store it in a granary led to the establishment of the first cities in the Fertile Crescent. Humans of all cultures have been eating wheat based products for at least 8000 years and it is the top traded food commodity in the world markets.

Less than 1% of the population is thought to have gluten intolerance by most studies.

From all this, you've determined that gluten is bad....because why exactly? Because it is 'processed'? We're not talking about high fructose corn syrup here, we're talking about crushing a seed and using the various products.

This anti-food information worries me as it seems to be spreading like anti-vaccination hysteria.

I was going to call you out on "rice gluten" which has nothing to do with wheat (which all of the "gluten-free" hubbub is about). Then I decided to hit up [Wikipedia][1]:

  Gluten is a protein composite found in wheat and related
  grains, including barley and rye.

and:

  The stored proteins of maize and rice are sometimes
  called glutens, but their proteins differ from true
  gluten.

Which is sort of confusing, because you also have [Glutinous Rice][2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutinous_rice

"Gluten" is just latin for "glue" hence agglutinate, glue, etc. Glutinous rice is just that -- it sticks together. The use for the protein is just an obscure gerund.

Yeah, well aware that Glutinous rice has nothing to do with gluten. Because rice has nothing to do with wheat.

I know what glutinous rice is. It's just the propensity to describe the parts of grains that are 'sticky' as 'gluten,' and then to have one of them actually officially named 'gluten' that becomes confusing.

Why are you convinced that gluten is bad for everyone?

He might be exaggerating a bit. There are two ways to understand what he's saying:

1) If wheat wasn't part of white people food for many centuries, and as a thought experiment it was invented in 2014, there's no way possible that the FDA / USDA would approve it for human consumption and stick it on the GRAS list. In other words the only reason we tolerate it in a world that bans red M+M food coloring etc is because it got grandfathered in. Not because its good or good enough.

2) In processed foods its always an empty calorie or bulk-ing substance. You cannot remove wheat from your diet and die of "wheat-deficiency disease" like happens if you try to remove all Vitamin C from your diet. If starvation was a serious medical problem in America I'd say taking twinkies away from the skinnies would be a pretty dumb idea, but in a nation of people dying from being too fat, a dietary substance that has no redeeming value other than empty calories and making farmers and food processors wealthy is a pretty tempting target to imagine banning. Corn can/should pretty much just go away for similar reasoning.

If as a hard sci fi novel you imagine space aliens or terrorists dropped a genetically engineered virus that wiped out corn and wheat, aside from short term shortages the only real effect is Americans would have a healthier weight and longer life. Not exactly a stellar endorsement for a foodstuff that its only real purpose is to make most of us fat and dead and a few of us wealthy.

What about wheat would make it so that the FDA would so likely not approve it? I ask in earnest and I expect there are a few things I don't know on the subject.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com