Attention any coeliac sufferers.

[RogerS]

Do you ever have a nagging feeling that some products labelled 'gluten-free' are causing you a problem? Even though the product might be labelled also as 'organic'?

Take a closer look at the label. Do you see Stabiliser as an added ingredient? Chances are that this stabiliser is carrageenan. It doesn't have any gluten in it but nevertheless is toxic to anyone with intestinal disorders. Could even explain why some of you who are not coeliac get a bloated feeling after eating some food.

My wife couldn't understand why she had suddenly started to get quite ill. Nothing in her diet had changed apart from her having to use a new product from Kallo. Kallo Delicious Original Organic Soya (ambient). The label says 'We love soya...no wheat, gluten free' from which a coeliac could assume that it was safe to consume. It is not. It contains carrageenan which we had never heard of before. A bit of Googling especially on American coeliac sites (side note ...the UK Coeliac Society is total waste of time, money and resources. They are so ineffectual) about this revealed it as the culprit. The extract below from Wiki.

Health concerns

The Joint FAO/WHO expert committee on food additives states that, "based on the information available, it is inadvisable to use carrageenan or processed eucheuma seaweed in infant formulas".[16] There is evidence from studies performed on rats, guinea pigs, and monkeys that indicates that degraded carrageenan (poligeenan) may cause ulcerations in the gastro-intestinal tract and gastro-intestinal cancer.[17] Poligeenan is produced from carrageenan subjected to high temperatures and acidity. The average carrageenan molecule weighs over 100,000 Da while poligeenans have a molecular weight of less than 50,000 Da. A scientific committee working on behalf of the European Commission has recommended that the amount of degraded carrageenan be limited to a maximum of 5% (which is the limit of detection) of total carrageenan mass. Upon testing samples of foods containing high molecular weight carrageens, researchers found no poligeenan.[18]
A study published in 2006 indicates that carrageenan induces inflammation in human intestinal epithelial cells in tissue culture through a BCL10-mediated pathway that leads to activation of NFkappaB and IL-8.[19] Carrageenan may be immunogenic due to its unusual alpha-1,3-galactosidic link that is part of its disaccharide unit structure. Consumption of carrageenan may have a role in intestinal inflammation and possibly inflammatory bowel disease, since BCL10 resembles NOD2, mutations of which are associated with genetic proclivity to Crohn's Disease.
Carrageenan is reported to interfere with macrophage activity.[20][21][22]
[edit]

And yet our Food Standards Agency allows this cr*p to go in our food. I can't help feeling that if we banned all the mucking about with our food that goes on then the health of the nation would dramatically improve.

And lastly, you might have picked up the phrase Ambient in the product description above. This was a new term (to me) adopted by the food industry. It is pure marketing speak. They have adopted it because its original name had accrued some bad connotations. That name? Long Life.

 

[Jensmith]

Thanks for that Roger. My Dad has Crohn's Disease so I've passed the info on to him. Sounds like a nasty additive.

 

[RogerS]

Trouble is that not all labels say what their 'stabiliser' is.

 

[Digit]

Much of the info on food has to have been decided upon by a politician as it works the same way. It answers the question whilst telling you nothing!
The info with BP tablets I take tell you not to take Grapefruit juice with them, don't tell you why though, the internet comes in handy there.

Roy.

 

[RogerS]

But at least they do tell you, Roy. The food lobby in this country is incredibly strong and the Food Safety Agency incredibly weak.

 

[Jacob]

It's a well known fact - loony health diets are bad for you and Kallo Delicious Original Organic Soya (ambient). sounds just the thing to avoid.

And yet our Food Standards Agency allows this cr*p to go in our food. I can't help feeling that if we banned all the mucking about with our food that goes on then the health of the nation would dramatically improve.

That's a bit "nanny state" for you Roger. :shock: Surely it's an individual's choice whether or not to eat crap food?

 

[Benchwayze]

I am not a coeliac, but I'd had enough of obesity.
I tried all sorts of diets that didn't work, so I wondered about 'stodge'.

I realised that bread hasn't always been with us, and knew that some people are allergic to wheat. By the by, I wondered if archeologists have any way of knowing if coeliac disease was a problem before wheat was used extensively to make bread. (I'd wager it wasn't!) Or maybe the wheat we use today is about as close to the original einkorn wheat as we are to Neanderthal Man. Anyhow, I decided I had eaten too much processed food, so I decided to do something about it.

If you think about it, bread, cereals, pastries, and pasta are just examples of processed food. So I now avoid them as much as possible, and it's working. I eat just flesh, cheese and eggs; and veggies and fruit. I try to get organic meat, fish and fowl of course, but it isn't always possible. But I do get plenty of fresh greens, salads and some fruit. (Not too much because of the sucrose.) Yes, I do treat myself to a bit of chocolate now and again, and Yorkshire puds with my beef!

Now I will say no more in case someone says I am being silly. Silly or not, it's me who is losing the weight, painlessly and without feeling hungry! And at 72 I don't look as old as G.McK, and I don't need a 'German' loo, so I can examine my...! (Although I believe GMcK does suffer from a condition that I wouldn't like to live with.)

8)

 

[RogerS]

.......

If you think about it, bread, cereals, pastries, and pasta are just examples of processed food.......

That's not strictly true..otherwise you'll be saying that anything cooked is processed...which is not what most of us consider when we talk about processed food.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with wheat per se ...unless you are a coeliac. Or any other cereals. Provided that the grain is simply harvested, threshed and dried. It's when the food industry starts dehusking it, fiddling about with it and pretending that the cr*p they call bread is actually bread. You can get decent bread...especially if you use pure cereal and make it yourself.

Cereals, as in anything you find in a cardboard box on the supermarket shelf (with the possible exception of some of the less mucked about with porridge oats) are all heavily processed. Much of the food you get in any tin, box, plastic container from the supermarket is processed. If we are looking at something new, the first thing we do is look at how many lines of ingredients there are. More than a couple, we don't even bother to look more closely. There is a massive amount of stabilisers, modified starch etc which is stuck in the food to give it the right 'mouth feel' and also to give it a longer shelf life. If that stuff is giving food a longer shelf life then just think what it's oing to your insides. No..you're not going to live longer, just feel bloated half the time.

Again, pasta....you can get unrefined pasta which is OK.

 

[Benchwayze]

Roger.

Bread, pastry, cakes, pasta, are not foods that you find growing on a tree or bush.
(Despite BBC TV trying to prove otherwise one April Fool's Day, years ago!) The flour they are made from has been processed.


Cooking is a process yes, but that depends what you mean by cooking.

Chucking a steak under the grill and giving it 2 minutes each side is cooking I suppose, but I wouldn't call a rare steak, processed! It's cooked, (just), but when it comes from under the grill, it's virtually the same as it was when it went under.

Still, most of the foods I eat now can be (and often are) eaten raw. Try that with bread!

So, processed foods to me are those which are usually mass-made, with all those additives, from a 'mix' of some sort; frequently sold in cans, or packets. To me that include bread; and sadly, beer! I know all of these things can be made at home, but they are still made from a mix of ingredients.

:wink:

 

[Jacob]

....

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with wheat per se ...unless you are a coeliac. Or any other cereals. Provided that the grain is simply harvested, threshed and dried. It's when the food industry starts dehusking it, fiddling about with it and pretending that the cr*p they call bread is actually bread. You can get decent bread...especially if you use pure cereal and make it yourself.

No, that's what did for me! Beautiful home made organic wholewheat bread every day (bread machine). Eating too much of the stuff did me guts in! Had to give up all wheat stuff for more than a year. Am now trying it again but cautiously and the weight is coming back too.
Wholewheat bread was about the last thing on my list - I went through giving up all the usual suspects. At one time I thought it was too much tonic in my gin :roll:

........Much of the food you get in any tin, box, plastic container from the supermarket is processed. If we are looking at something new, the first thing we do is look at how many lines of ingredients there are. More than a couple, we don't even bother to look more closely. .....

Me too, but purity is not the only issue.

Again, pasta....you can get unrefined pasta which is OK.

I never took to wholewheat pasta - it's so different from the real thing. Maybe there are Italian recipes for it? Doesn't work very well with the normal ones.

 

[Benchwayze]

Jacob

I found exactly the same thing. As soon as I partake bread I stop losing weight. I am convinced we can live without the stuff, especially the cardboard substitute they serve up at Asda and such places. Check out the library and read 'Wheat Belly' by William Davis MD. That should convince anyone except maybe the farmers and the rest of the grain industry!

Lose the wheat, lose the weight.

PS.

I am about to sit down to a fillet steak, grilled, with a two-egg and cheese omelette and French beans. The one sin? Onion rings! 8)

 

[RogerS]

Can we please not go off on the 'wheat makes you fat' discussion that we had in another thread.

 

[Benchwayze]

No problem Roger.

I'll just say
Wheat makes ME obese. I don't eat it any more.

I am losing weight. Another 5 lbs since the New year.

John

 

[Digit]

John, the subject of aquired food intolerance, as in wheat, I'll make some enquiries amongst my archy friends, see if they know anything.
But an interesting reversal is supposed Lactose intolerance, it varies from race to race, please Jacob no lecture on that again, and apparently most people are born with a degree of 'intolerance', but adapt.

* Lactose is a disaccharide sugar found exclusively in milk. Absorption of lactose is dependent upon the enzyme lactase.
* Lactase is the enzyme that hydrolyses lactose to the monosaccharides, glucose and galactose, and is in the tips of the villi of the small intestine.
* This enzyme is essential in babies but tends to decrease in amount after the age of 2, although symptoms of lactose intolerance rarely occur before the age of 6.
* It is argued that it is only because we have the unusual habit of ingesting milk from other species, usually the cow, that the enzyme persists beyond the age of weaning.

Most milk intolerance in young children is due to allergy to cow's milk protein and not deficiency of lactase.

So perhaps we are not supposed to eat wheat, I wonder about Rice?

Roy.

 

[Digit]

A bit long winded and it's only part of the discussion John but it answers your question I think.

The most interesting of these examples relates directly to our discussion here, and has to do with the gene for lactose tolerance in adults. Babies are born with the capacity to digest lactose via production of the digestive enzyme lactase. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to make use of mother's milk, which contains the milk sugar lactose. But sometime after weaning, this capacity is normally lost, and there is a gene that is responsible. Most adults--roughly 70% of the world's population overall--do not retain the ability to digest lactose into adulthood[116] and this outcome is known as "lactose intolerance." (Actually this is something of a misnomer, since adult lactose intolerance would have been the baseline normal condition for virtually everyone in the human race up until Neolithic (agricultural) times.[117]) If these people attempt to drink milk, then the result may be bloating, gas, intestinal distress, diarrhea, etc.[118]

Influence of human culture on genetic selection pressures. However--and this is where it gets interesting--those population groups that do retain the ability to produce lactase and digest milk into adulthood are those descended from the very people who first began domesticating animals for milking during the Neolithic period several thousand years ago.[119] (The earliest milking populations in Europe, Asia, and Africa began the practice probably around 4,000 B.C.[120]) And even more interestingly, in population groups where cultural changes have created "selection pressure" for adapting to certain behavior--such as drinking milk in this case--the rate of genetic adaptation to such changes significantly increases. In this case, the time span for widespread prevalence of the gene for lactose tolerance within milking population groups has been estimated at approximately 1,150 years[121]--a very short span of time in evolutionary terms.

Relationship between earliest milking cultures and prevalence of lactose tolerance in populations. There is a very close correlation between the 30% of the world's population who are tolerant to lactose and the earliest human groups who began milking animals. These individuals are represented most among modern-day Mediterranean, East African, and Northern European groups, and emigrants from these groups to other countries. Only about 20% of white Americans in general are lactose intolerant, but among sub-groups the rates are higher: 90-100% among Asian-Americans (as well as Asians worldwide), 75% of African-Americans (most of whom came from West Africa), and 80% of Native Americans. 50% of Hispanics worldwide are lactose intolerant.[122]

Now whether it is still completely healthy for the 30% of the world's population who are lactose tolerant to be drinking animals' milk--which is a very recent food in our evolutionary history--I can't say. It may well be there are other factors involved in successfully digesting and making use of milk without health side-effects other than the ability to produce lactase--I haven't looked into that particular question yet. But for our purposes here, the example does powerfully illustrate that genetic adaptations for digestive changes can take place with much more rapidity than was perhaps previously thought.*

Genetic changes in population groups who crossed the threshold from hunting-gathering to grain-farming earliest. Another interesting example of the spread of genetic adaptations since the Neolithic has been two specific genes whose prevalence has been found to correlate with the amount of time populations in different geographical regions have been eating the grain-based high-carbohydrate diets common since the transition from hunting and gathering to Neolithic agriculture began 10,000 years ago. (These two genes are the gene for angiotensin-converting enzyme--or ACE--and the one for apolipoprotein B, which, if the proper forms are not present, may increase one's chances of getting cardiovascular disease.)[123]

In the Middle East and Europe, rates of these two genes are highest in populations (such as Greece, Italy, and France) closer to the Middle Eastern "fertile crescent" where agriculture in this part of the globe started, and lowest in areas furthest away, where the migrations of early Neolithic farmers with their grain-based diets took longest to reach (i.e., Northern Ireland, Scotland, Finland, Siberia). Closely correlating with both the occurrence of these genes and the historical rate of grain consumption are corresponding rates of deaths due to coronary heart disease. Those in Mediterranean countries who have been eating high-carbohydrate grain-based diets the longest (for example since approximately 6,000 B.C. in France and Italy) have the lowest rates of heart disease, while those in areas where dietary changes due to agriculture were last to take hold, such as Finland (perhaps only since 2,000 B.C.), have the highest rates of death due to heart attack. Statistics on breast cancer rates in Europe also are higher for countries who have been practicing agriculture the least amount of time.[124]

Whether grain-based diets eaten by people whose ancestors only began doing so recently (and therefore lack the appropriate gene) is actually causing these health problems (and not simply correlated by coincidence) is at this point a hypothesis under study. (One study with chickens, however--who in their natural environment eat little grain--has shown much less atherosclerosis on a high-fat, high-protein diet than on a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet.[125]) But again, and importantly, the key point here is that genetic changes in response to diet can be more rapid than perhaps once thought. The difference in time since the advent of Neolithic agriculture between countries with the highest and lowest incidences of these two genes is something on the order of 3,000-5,000 years,[126] showing again that genetic changes due to cultural selection pressures for diet can force more rapid changes than might occur otherwise.

Recent evolutionary changes in immunoglobulin types, and genetic rates of change overall. Now we should also look at the other end of the time scale for some perspective. The Cavalli-Sforza population genetics team that has been one of the pioneers in tracking the spread of genes around the world due to migrations and/or interbreeding of populations has also looked into the genes that control immunoglobulin types (an important component of the immune system). Their estimate here is that the current variants of these genes were selected for within the last 50,000-100,000 years, and that this time span would be more representative for most groups of genes. They also feel that in general it is unlikely gene frequencies for most groups of genes would undergo significant changes in time spans of less than about 11,500 years.[127]

However, the significant exception they mention--and this relates especially to our discussion here--is where there are cultural pressures for certain behaviors that affect survival rates.[128] And the two examples we cited above: the gene for lactose tolerance (milk-drinking) and those genes associated with high-carbohydrate grain consumption, both involve cultural selection pressures that came with the change from hunting and gathering to Neolithic agriculture. Again, cultural selection pressures for genetic changes operate more rapidly than any other kind. Nobody yet, at least so far as I can tell, really knows whether or not the observed genetic changes relating to the spread of milk-drinking and grain-consumption are enough to confer a reasonable level of adaptation to these foods among populations who have the genetic changes, and the picture seems mixed.*

Rates of gluten intolerance (gluten is a protein in certain grains such as wheat, barley, and oats that makes dough sticky and conducive to bread-baking) are lower than for lactose intolerance, which one would expect given that milk-drinking has been around for less than half the time grain-consumption has. Official estimates of gluten intolerance range from 0.3% to 1% worldwide depending on population group.[129] Some researchers, however, believe that gluten intolerance is but the tip of the iceberg of problems due to grain consumption (or more specifically, wheat). Newer research seems to suggest that anywhere from 5% to as much as 20-30% of the population with certain genetic characteristics (resulting in what is called a "permeable intestine") may absorb incompletely digested peptide fragments from wheat with adverse effects that could lead to a range of possible diseases.[130]

Roy.

 

[wobblycogs]

In answer to Johns question about whether archeologists can tell if someone had coeliac disease the answer would be no they can't tell. The disease primarily affects the intestine which, being soft tissue, rots away quickly leaving no trace. As far as I'm aware there is no damage to the skeleton that would indicate the condition.

Having said that the ancient Greeks did record the symptoms of a condition that matches coeliac disease although they were completely wrong about what caused it. As we now have a pretty good understanding of why some people have coeliac disease I think it's probably fair to say that it has been with us from as soon as we started eating wheat.

Thanks for the heads up on carrageenan Roger, I'll add it to my daughters "do not eat" list.

 

[Benchwayze]

In answer to Johns question about whether archeologists can tell if someone had coeliac disease the answer would be no they can't tell. The disease primarily affects the intestine which, being soft tissue, rots away quickly leaving no trace. As far as I'm aware there is no damage to the skeleton that would indicate the condition.

Having said that the ancient Greeks did record the symptoms of a condition that matches coeliac disease although they were completely wrong about what caused it. As we now have a pretty good understanding of why some people have coeliac disease I think it's probably fair to say that it has been with us from as soon as we started eating wheat.

Thanks for the heads up on carrageenan Roger, I'll add it to my daughters "do not eat" list.

Thanks for that info Wobbly. I am obliged.

 

[bugbear]

Chances are that this stabiliser is carrageenan. It doesn't have any gluten in it but nevertheless is toxic to anyone with intestinal disorders.

Isn't that the traditional sea weed thickener used in yummy Irish puddings for centuries?

BugBear

 

[RogerS]

Chances are that this stabiliser is carrageenan. It doesn't have any gluten in it but nevertheless is toxic to anyone with intestinal disorders.

Isn't that the traditional sea weed thickener used in yummy Irish puddings for centuries?

BugBear

Quite likely and probably OK when used the traditional way.

In parts of Scotland (where it is known as (An) Cairgean in Scottish Gaelic) and Ireland (variety used is Chondrus Crispus known in Irish Gaelic variously as carraigín [little rock], fiadháin [wild stuff], clúimhín cait [cat's puff], mathair an duilisg [mother of seaweeds], ceann donn [red head]), it is known as Carrageen Moss it is boiled in milk and strained, before sugar and other flavourings such as vanilla, cinnamon, brandy, or whisky are added. The end-product is a kind of jelly similar to pannacotta, tapioca, or blancmange.

But once the food chemists get their mitts on it and start mucking about with it......

When iota carrageenan is combined with sodium stearoyl lactylate (SSL), a synergistic effect is created, allowing for stabilizing/emulsifying not obtained with any other type of carrageenan (kappa/lambda) or with other emulsifiers (mono and diglycerides, etc.). SSL combined with iota carrageenan is capable of producing emulsions under both hot and cold conditions using either vegetable or animal fat.

you can read about it here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrageenan