The FastDay Forum

People intolerant of wheat are not necessarily intolerant of gluten. If you can eat gluten then you can often tolerate spelt and oats. I have problems eating out as I can't tolerate either. Unless you are lucky enough to have someone in the kitchen who understands about hidden gluten and cross contamination you can end up suffering for days. As well as the gut reactions it affects my joints badly so I'm wary of anything I don't make myself.

Theres a lot to be said for the theory that gluten intolerance is increasing due to the use of cheap wheat propped up by additives to produce cheap bread, quickly and in bulk.

I have a friend who is intolerant of wheat but is ok with gluten in oats or spelt, when they are in Europe it is easier to simply describe yourself as ceoliac and avoid gluten altogether, than risk puffing up like a hamster.

But my friend is not avoiding gluten when in Greece, on the contrary...

My friend is based in Germany and does react when they accidentally have wheat there. But spelt or 'dinkel' is pretty big in health foody circles over there and that is fine. Your reference to pasta struck me because I had just been talking to them about the durum wheat pasta is made from. Bread wheat, durum wheat and spelt are different varieties of wheat that evolved from emmer. If (Northern European?) bread wheat is a problem but spelt isn't, then maybe durum is ok too. It is a bit risky though.[/quote]

When I asked her she said that in the US she avoids anything that comes from wheat. I've no idea what spelt is, I know dinkel but it's not very popular around here...

Theres a lot to be said for the theory that gluten intolerance is increasing due to the use of cheap wheat propped up by additives to produce cheap bread, quickly and in bulk.

Miffy, I'll tell you a story:
I usually make my own bread. And I usually buy my flour from bakeries but not in Athens. When I go to small villages for a holiday, I buy a few kilos of flour to have for my bread. I use a cube of yeast for half a kilo of flour and it rises considerably.

One time, I didn't have any flour left and I went to my local bakery. Got the flour (which looked the exact same with the ones I bought from villages) and used the same amount of yeast. The dough got TWICE the size it usually got!!! I've no idea what they put in the flour but my guess is that it's not anything natural or good for us to eat...

Considering the fact that gluten intolerance is a "modern" disease, I can't help thinking that it's not the wheat itself, it's all the cr@p they put inside the wheat products.

Hubby & his family had a small family bakery but we got wiped out by a rash of big bakeries churning out cheap bread rolls like over inflated cotton wool balls. Of course theres a trend now towards the more artisan breads but it came too late for us. People are learning the hard way that you can't trust the industrial producers as they are driven by profit and not quality. I had no intollerances until we had to start buying our bread from the supermarket! Some of the problems are down to cheap and inferior flours but some of it is because the yeast is boosted to give a quick rise so the gluten doesn't change and develop. Don't even get me started on what goes into long-life bread!

When I asked her she said that in the US she avoids anything that comes from wheat. I've no idea what spelt is, I know dinkel but it's not very popular around here...

Dinkel is spelt.
That really sound odd, doesn't it?.
It feels like I should say:
Dinkel is spelt d-i-n-k-e-l

[carorees]

I wonder if it is the additives that cause the problem or the superfine grinding of wheat and the whole Chorleywood process used to make cheap bread?

Well, we certainly don't eat the bread we ate 30 years ago, not in big cities for sure. And the bread we eat now is "wrong", otherwise there wouldn't be so many intolerances going around...
That's why I try to make my own. Not that I don't eat various junk food but my experience with seeing the bread rising and rising and rising was an eye-opener!!!

I wonder if it is the additives that cause the problem or the superfine grinding of wheat and the whole Chorleywood process used to make cheap bread?

http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/72/5/560.full is an interesting read.

If the Dutch can generate sensitive reactions with wheat flour in the 1940s I think we can put aside Chorleywood or new fangled additives.