Why We Decided To Try Eating Gluten Again, and How The Experiment Will Proceed

11:07 p.m.  November 4, 2011.

There isn’t going to be a recipe tonight.  Tonight, I am going to talk about why Hubby and I plan to try eating gluten again, and how our trial of such will proceed.  It’s not because we think we are missing out on “healthy whole grains” as touted by the powers that be, or because we plan to start gorging ourselves on refined wheat flour every day like the rest of America widely unknowingly does.  We still believe in seriously limiting refined foods, and that carbohydrates should always be complex, come primarily from whole fruits and vegetables which are as close to their natural state as possible, and have good glycemic indexes.  We still plan to avoid all refined grains, wheat flour or otherwise, unless they're absolutely essential to a recipe (such as pastries).  We are trying this out now because we have conducted a lot of research and done a lot of thinking, and we believe that removing gluten might not have been the complete answer to Hubby's tummy troubles that we originally thought it was.

As was outlined in my backstory post, even though neither Hubby nor I have a diagnosable allergy or sensitivity to gluten, we went on this gluten-free journey in the interest of helping his colitis feel as good as it possibly can for as much of the time as possible.  And it seems to have worked.  His tummy has been better over these last two months than it has been in years.  But, starting to powerfully miss “real” bread, we got to thinking, and analyzing, and discussing to a great extent.  In the end, we decided that maybe it’s not (just) the gluten after all that was the solution.  Maybe it was something related to, or commercially tied to, the gluten; something that by eliminating gluten, we by more than mere coincidence also got rid of.  So, Hubby and I have decided to experiment with eating gluten again.  Here’s the detailed account of why….

Part One of Our Reasoning

Becoming gluten-free has opened our eyes.  We’ve learned about a large range of grains, flours, and foods that we otherwise may never have tried or even heard of (such as sorghum, millet, teff, and amaranth).  We’ve discovered new (and some better) ways of cooking and baking.  We found out where wheat flour and its gluten is truly needed and where a recipe can be improved upon by substituting it out (even in baking and desserts).  We've expanded our knowledge and confidence with writing our own recipes, and had tons of fun experimenting in the kitchen.  We are, by necessity, eating far more clean, whole foods; things as close to nature as possible; and practically zero prepared, packaged or processed items.

Something we noticed, however, is that there is one new non-whole-food ingredient that we are consuming almost every time a gluten-free flour is involved.  That ingredient is Xanthan gum.  So we started researching Xanthan gum, and don’t really like what we found out about it.

According to WebMD, Xanthan gum has many uses, but can also cause intestinal upset, flatulence, and bloating (the very symptoms we are trying to help Hubby get away from).  It can also apparently have negative consequences for diabetics, as it interferes with some medicines and might slow the absorption of sugar from the digestive tract.  Even a website called http://www.xanthangum.org/ reports these claims.

A couple nights ago, I made gluten-free chicken pot pie for dinner (recipe to be posted in the coming days).  There were 2 teaspoons (6 grams) of Xanthan gum in the crust.  The pie was cut into 6 servings, so we each ate about 1 gram of Xanthan gum that night.  Our dinner guest that night happens to be diabetic, and had a second helping -- so 2 grams of Xanthan gum for him.  There's 2/3 of a gram of Xanthan gum in 2 slices of my gluten-free white sandwich bread.  The daily limit according to the “Dosing” tab on the WebMD link above is 10 mg/kg per day, and 15 grams per day when used specifically as a laxative.   At my weight, my daily limit would be 3/4 of a gram (whoops, now you can figure out what I weigh! lol).....meaning I had too much Xanthan gum with my chicken pot pie, and 2 slices of bread on any given day would put me very near the limit.  I also noticed the day after eating the chicken pot pie (and having it leftover for lunch, too) that I did have awful gas.

So, maybe we don’t want to replace our gluten with Xanthan gum anymore?

Because Xanthan Gum isn't something we can grow in a garden, raise on a farm or create without a scientific chemical reaction -- it's not something we want to eat, nor do we think people should necessarily consume it in general.  I, therefore, have been trying to find a substitute for Xanthan gum to use in my gluten-free cooking wherever Xanthan gum is called for.  There are several possibilities, but the whole endeavor caused us to notice something and question: What happens when a person decides to be gluten-free?  What things do you stop eating when you stop eating gluten?  If you think stuff like bread, pasta, cookies and crackers -- you’d obviously be correct.  But, as Hubby and I have discovered, there’s a lot more that you end up cutting out of your diet when you go gluten-free.

Let’s look at an example of something we used to eat on a regular basis before kicking the gluten to the curb -- Arnold Sandwich Thins.  Here is this product’s list of ingredients:

Whole Wheat Flour, Water, Wheat Bran, Yeast, Cellulose Fiber, Sugar, Polydextrose, Salt, Canola Oil, Propionate, Sorbic Acid, Guar Gum, Monoglycerides, Citric Acid, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Sucralose, Soy Lecithin.

And here is the list of ingredients in Wonder Bread, a product eaten every day by millions and millions of Americans:

Wheat Flour, Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup or Sugar, Yeast, Contains 2% or Less of: Soybean Oil, Barley Malt, Wheat Gluten, Salt, Calcium Carbonate, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Vitamin D3, Vinegar, Mono- and Diglycerides, Calcium Sulfate, Monocalcium Phosphate, Yeast Nutrients (Ammonium Chloride, Ammonium Sulfate), Enzymes, Yeast Extract, Wheat Starch, Calcium Dioxide, Ferrous Sulfate (Iron), B Vitamins (Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate [B1], Riboflavin [B2], Folic Acid), Soy Lecithin, Azodicarbonamide, Soy Flour, Whey, Calcium Propionate (to Retain Freshness), DATEM, Sorbic Acid.

Seriously, are they joking with all these ingredients?  Far more of them are gross and *not* needed than are real and part of a good, clean recipe.  Gah.

In the lists, I have highlighted all the things that certainly don’t need to be in a bread recipe and/or I can’t identify merely by their (sometimes unpronounceable) names.  These are also things that don’t end up in your food when you go gluten-free; i.e. when you are forced to cook practically everything from scratch at home.  So, just what are these unnecessary ingredients?  A quick Google search will give you all the information you need.  I know I can’t believe everything I read on the Internet or accept it all as fact, but here are some statements from my Google searching that I found particularly troubling:

• Xanthan gum - I've already outlined above why we now dislike this ingredient.
• “Cellulose Fiber is an indigestable synthetic polymer of glucose…a food ingredient classified as soluble fiber by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but not Health Canada.”  Why does the FDA allow us to eat this, but other governments don’t allow their citizens to do the same?  As Hubby often says, perhaps the food administration should get away from the drug administration.
• “According to the Pesticide Action Network North America, calcium propionate is slightly toxic” and “can be used as a fungicide on fruit.”  Awesome, right?
• Sorbic Acid is produced “from crotonaldehyde and ketene.”  Crotonaldehyde is “an irritant” and is listed as an “extremely hazardous substance” as defined by the U.S. Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act.  Cool -- want to sprinkle some of that on your ice cream?
• Guar Gum is known to have laxative effects, yet on the other hand is said to help IBS and other chronic functional bowel ailments.  Does this not seem contradictory to you?
• Ammonium Chloride – “The mineral is especially common on burning coal dumps (formed by condensation of coal-derived gases), but also on some volcanoes."  As Hubby said: “WHY IS THAT SHIT IN ANY FOOD?!?!?!?!?”  The Wonder Bread ingredients list Ammonium Chloride as a “yeast nutrient,” but I’ll let my yeast eat plain old sugar, thankyouverymuch.
• Azodicarbonamide?  Just read the link.  Need I say more?

These are just a few examples.  I am sure we (and you) could come up with plenty more.  Now sure, some of these things are “natural” or derived from natural sources, and maybe have potentially beneficial uses in medicine or elsewhere….but when I see descriptions such those above, I want to know – Why *do* we put these things into our food?  Why do we agree to ingest things that are so controversial, so difficult to make or synthesize, so poorly researched as consumables, and so potentially dangerous?    It makes no sense to us.  There are too many unknowns with these "ingredients" and these things, I propose, are not meant for going into mouths.

Maybe, after all this time of “not eating gluten,” it was instead the fact that we happened by consequence to not be eating any of this other garbage which made us (and most importantly Hubby’s tummy) feel so much better.  What would happen if we could consume the gluten, but without all the other stuff that always seems to come along with it in commercially prepared foods?

Part Two of Our Reasoning

The second half of why we are embarking on our little test is the simple fact that while we have been “98% Gluten Free,” there have been times when we did eat gluten, and interestingly neither of us (more importantly Hubby) felt any ill effects from it.  But these were instances when we ingested gluten that, as far as we know, wasn't coupled with any/all of the other modern chemical ingredients like those listed above.

For example, there was an instance when Hubby ate some pizza from a place we are pretty sure makes their dough from scratch -- i.e. nothing in it but flour, yeast and water.  A second example was at a restaurant that bakes their bread fresh.  Thirdly was when he got a meatball sub on bread baked at the supermarket in-house bakery.  Another time was when we went to a local donut shop that makes their donuts in-house, daily, and "with no processed ingredients."  There have been a couple more instances, but I think you get the point.

What matters is that on all of these occasions, neither of us felt any ill effects from the gluten that was surely in these breads and other wheat flour containing items.  Neither of us felt as crappy or otherwise as bad as we had before going gluten-free.  And to quell the argument of naysayers who think perhaps gluten just never affected us in the first place, please know that there have also been days over these past two months where we ate gluten (and where we don't know what other chemical ingredients were or weren't also present) when we did have plenty of reason to regret it soon afterwards.

Our Conclusion

What we have gleaned from all of our research and observations is that perhaps it was all the chemicals and "mystery ingredients" which come along with commercial wheat-containing foods that were bugging Hubby’s tummy….not the wheat gluten itself.

If gluten itself (all by itself) turns out to truly be our culprit, we would much rather just not eat gluten-containing foods at all, not include flour in recipes where it’s not essential (like for browning meats), and just eat “real” bread and pasta once in a while when we feel like suffering the consequence.  We would rather do this instead of  replacing the gluten with something (Xanthan gum or otherwise) that we see as bad for a whole other set of reasons.

As it is -- because we are big on whole, natural, unrefined foods -- we are not the kind of people who eat gluten-containing foods very much anyways.  And we don't like the idea of foods that have been altered, GMO'd, treated with chemicals/pesticides/preservatives, or changed from their natural states the way William Davis, M.D. describes in Chapter 2 of "Wheat Belly" that wheat has been modified over the past few decades.  For example, we don't eat pasta and bread often, and we generally eliminate flour in all recipes where it isn't an integral part  So when we do eat things such as bread and pasta (or pizza), we want them to be really good.  When we do eat desserts containing gluten, or anything else containing refined or processed ingredients, the item must be totally worth it.  Do I absolutely need breading on my chicken parm?  No.  Actually, living gluten-free or not, I prefer it without the breading.  Do I truly need a bun with my hamburger?  Not unless it's an awesome bun that I know doesn't have any weird ingredients in it.  But again, I now seem to enjoy burgers more sans bread.  Do I really want to eat anything in a bag, package or box from a commercial manufacturer, especially if it contains processed parts and/or other chemical-ish ingredients.  Definitely not.  Not ever.  I'd rather make the same food at home from scratch, or find a similar product without anything unnatural in it.  Do I need wheat flour or Xanthan gum to make spectacular brownies?  Hell no!  Do I need gluten-filled wheat flour to make a perfect (non-Xanthan-gum-involving) pastry?  Probably.  These are the lines along which, if we were to no longer reject gluten altogether for the sake of rejecting gluten, we would decide when and when not to eat refined wheat flour and consequently, gluten.  In other words, I bet we would turn out to still be Mostly or 98% Gluten Free simply because by avoiding refined, processed, and non-whole-food ingredients, we would in turn end up avoiding gluten, too.

Our Own Little Scientific Method

So, tomorrow morning, I am going to bake a loaf of bread, complete with gluteny wheat flour.  It's other ingredients will be water, yeast, sugar, oil and salt.  No more, no less.  Hubby will eat two slices of that bread each day for a week, but change nothing else about our current gluten-free lifestyle.  So, he will be ingesting gluten every day, but none of the other chemicals and scary ingredients that come along with commercially available gluten-containing products.  We will record what he eats every day, as well as how he feels (100% being how his stomach felt before he got colitis, 85% being the best it ever got after diagnosis, and 90-95%+ being how it's felt since going gluten-free).

Then, if needed, for a week we will go back to 100% gluten-free (and now also, chemical-free) life, so that any effects he may develop from the week of bread can resolve.

In the final week, if gluten-alone seems to have had no ill effects, Hubby will eat two slices of Wonder Bread or an Arnold Sandwich Thin each day for a week, again changing nothing else about our current gluten-free lifestyle.  For this week, he will be ingesting gluten every day, plus any/all of the other chemicals and scary ingredients that come along with commercially available gluten-containing products.  We will continue recording what he eats every day, as well as how he feels (100% being how his stomach felt before he got colitis, 85% being the best it ever got after diagnosis, and 90-95%+ being how it's felt since going gluten-free).  If on the other hand gluten-only does seem to have had ill effects, in the third week perhaps we will try him eating foods that contain no gluten but do contain the other chemicals and scary ingredients that often come along with commercially available products.  Or maybe at that point we'll just call the experiment done -- seeing as how we don't want to eat the chemicals anyway, there'd be no need to test a chemical allowing, gluten-free diet.  We'll have to wait and see how phase 1 goes before we decide exactly how and when phase 2 of the experiment will run.

When we're done, at the end of this three week period, we hope to know the truth -- if the problem and solution is the gluten, the whole gluten, and nothing but the gluten.  Or maybe we will learn that it's either a certain amount/build up/overload of gluten that sets his tummy off, or it's the garbage that usually comes along with gluten, or some combination of the two.  Day one of the test begins in one hour....tick tock.