Gluten Intolerance or Chemical Sensitivity: An Unethical Experiment on an Innocent Child
1.0 Background
For roughly ten thousand years, the human species has very much enjoyed eating gluten, a chewy and delicious mixture of two proteins found in wheat and other cereal grains. A small number of humans (roughly 0.7% of the population) suffer from a condition known as celiac disease, which makes them unable to digest gluten, and causes a number of unpleasant symptoms when gluten is consumed. A much larger portion of the population believe themselves to be “gluten intolerant.” This condition is generally characterized by gastric distress when wheat and wheat by-products are eaten, but not by diagnosable celiac disease.
Gluten intolerance is a relatively recent phenomenon, appearing mostly in the United States in the past ten years. This raises the inevitable question: what has changed?
2.0 Materials and Methods
2.1 Study Population
This study was carried out on a population consisting of one unsuspecting and innocent child.
2.2 Experimental Procedure
Commencing around age 17, subject began experiencing severe and unremitting gastric distress, characterized primarily by extended bouts of what appeared to be her pureed internal organs pouring out through her rectum. Medical advice was sought. Tests were run, including those for celiac disease. All were negative.
In the absence of helpful medical advice, subject began eliminating items from her diet. Dairy. No effect. Caffeine. No effect. When wheat and wheat by-products were eliminated, however, all symptoms resolved within a matter of days.
Over the course of the next few months, subject periodically unknowingly consumed items containing wheat by-products. Examples included Twizzlers, soy sauce, and butter containing toast crumbs. Each incident induced hours of colonic blowout. These natural experiments seem to eliminate the placebo effect as a possible cause for subject’s improvement.
After some six months of consuming grainy and flavorless corn and rice based baked goods, subject obtained five pounds of imported Italian wheat flour, having heard that others with similar issues were able to safely eat wheat when traveling in Europe. Subject cleared her calendar for the next 48 hours, then commenced to bake and eat a batch of chocolate chip cookies made with the aforementioned flour. Result? Nothing. No distress whatsoever.
3.0 Discussion
Three observations can be made from this experiment:
Subject’s initial distress resulted from eating wheat and wheat by-products.
Subject’s distress was not psychological in origin.
Subject’s distress appears to be specific to American wheat and wheat by-products.
Based on these observations, we can conclude that subject’s distress was not in fact related to gluten per se, since Italian wheat contains gluten just as American wheat does. Some have hypothesized that European wheat may have lower gluten concentrations. However, it is difficult to argue that more gluten is contained in a splash of American soy sauce than in an entire batch of Italian cookies.
It is true that American farmers in some cases may be using different strains of wheat than European farmers. Another explanation put forward for these observations (which are not unique to this experiment) has been that hybridization of the American strains may have introduced a new protein or compound into the wheat kernel that was not there previously, and that is not present in European wheat. It could be this unknown substance which is inducing the symptoms of so-called gluten intolerance.
A more likely explanation, however, lies in the harvest practices of the majority of American wheat farmers. It has become common in recent years to douse wheat fields with glyphosate, a broad-spectrum herbicide, just prior to harvest. This serves two purposes: it kills the wheat stalks, bringing the entire field to harvest readiness, and desiccates the kernels, making them ready for processing. It also, of course, introduces a certain amount of glyphosate into the kernel, from whence it makes its way into all that nice, fluffy American flour.
Glyphosate has been used as an herbicide both in agriculture and in yard care for more than forty years. It is generally considered to be safe. Lots of things that are safe to spray around the yard, however, are not entirely so in your cookies.
4.0 Conclusions
This study has an n of 1. As such, all conclusions must be taken with a grain of glyphosate. However, it seems clear that in this particular case, something in American wheat which is not present in Italian wheat is wreaking havoc on an otherwise healthy subject’s digestive system. The two possibilities for what exactly that is are a tasty treat that has been a part of our diet since antiquity, and an herbicide that I refuse to use on my yard because I’m concerned it might sicken my dog. The selection of the most likely explanation is left as an exercise for the reader.
