That was missing! “It has acquired the characteristics of an epidemic and has increased in frequency by 250%.” This is the nutritionist’s conclusion about sensitivity to gluten.
Mihaela Bilic identified several reasons, including huge financial interests in the food and agriculture industries. The nutritionist revealed figures and statistics little known to citizens. Of course, in the foreground no additional information about gluten intolerance.
“It has acquired the characteristics of an epidemic.”
“DISINTOX: We have become intolerant to gluten because we are chronically intoxicated with pesticides.
The gluten-free food market reached 15 billion euros in 2018 and is constantly growing. At the same time, gluten sensitivity has acquired the characteristics of an epidemic and has increased in frequency by 250% in recent years (from 12.9% of the world’s population in 2012 to 32.8% in 2015). It’s hard to believe that this is self-suggestion, since so many people react negatively to the presence of cereals in their diet.
Although medically there is an autoimmune condition in which gluten consumption is prohibited, celiac disease affects only 2.5% of the world’s population. In practice, gluten is avoided by 25% of the American population and 8-15% of the European population. Consumption of gluten-free products has become more than a fashionable habit, it is perceived as synonymous with healthy eating.
Gluten demonization is a reality of the consumer market
The demonization of gluten is a reality of today’s consumer market, where cereals and gluten provide 20% of calories consumed globally. How was it possible for a staple food like bread to become an enemy from a friend in just a few years? How did our body suddenly become sensitive and intolerant to gluten?
What exactly is gluten? A protein from cereals (wheat, barley, oats, rye) that is incompletely digested in the human body and can give intestinal inflammation. Even so, the symptoms are minimal, and humanity would not have survived without the advent of cereals and agriculture 10,000 years ago in our evolution. A small number of people have celiac disease, an autoimmune condition caused by gluten, which has a serious impact on the whole body.
It is different and has nothing to do with non-celiac sensitivity to gluten, the epidemic we face today and which is neither autoimmune disease nor allergy. Is this intolerance caused by the increase in the percentage of gluten in cereals?
Today’s cereals contain only 15-25% gluten
The culmination is that today’s cereals contain only 15-25% gluten, compared to 30% gluten in past wheat variants. But it’s a different type of gluten, more elastic! The toughness of gluten or its breaking strength is denoted by the coefficient W and measured in joules. Ancient grain species had W = 30-60 joules, while modern wheat has W = 150-350 joules.
The advantage of increased W is the obtaining of a more elastic dough, which does not break when kneaded and is easier to process. The disadvantage is that digestive enzymes can no longer digest it and break it down into small fragments of carbohydrates, digestion will be slowed down, inflammation, bloating and thus gluten intolerance
Not only has the quality of gluten changed, gluten is now used as a food additive in over 30% of packaged and overprocessed products on store shelves. So the amount of gluten in the cereals did not increase, but the amount of gluten in the food increased in a stunning way, being added as a thickening agent. the leavening time of the dough has been shortened.
What is the role of microorganisms present in yeast?
The microorganisms present in yeast or maya have the role of predigesting gluten, bakery products must be left to rise before being baked. Or currently the fermentation time is a maximum of 2 hours, when in fact it should be even 2 days. So it’s no wonder that the wrongly leavened dough causes us indigestion.
But the greatest disservice that modern agriculture has brought to human health is the invention of the technique of forced ripening / ripening of cereals.
Canada, a country whose climate did not allow wheat to be grown, has thus become the world’s leading supplier of durum wheat. Since 2000, it has been observed that spraying the herbicide a few days before harvest kills the spike and allows the grains to dry quickly so that they can be harvested. Insufficiently ripened wheat should first be dried and then harvested, but chemical maturation with glyphosate solves this problem.
The herbicide used in the US and Canada is banned in Europe
It solves it for agriculture, but it makes us consumers sick. The herbicide stays on the wheat grains and we ingest it. In Europe, this method of chemical maturation is not allowed, but wheat from America and Canada has invaded the European market.
Glyphosate is N-phosphonomethyl-glycine, an amino acid analog that in the body is confused with glycine; it replaces glycine in the structure of proteins in the body and leads to alteration of cellular DNA, the cause of autoimmune diseases. At the digestive level, glyphosate acts as a kind of broad-spectrum antibiotic that gradually kills the colonies of beneficial bacteria responsible for protecting the body against disease.
Chronic ingestion of glyphosate in small doses profoundly alters the balance of the microbiota in the digestive tract, and from here to food intolerance and atypical allergies is only one step.
Should the demonization of bread and gluten products be the solution to our health? Modern society has allowed the industrialization of agriculture to the point where it creates problems for us. But instead of solving the problem, the food industry is inventing a new range of gluten-free products.
What would be the solution?
The real solution would be to return to responsible methods of growing cereals. The real solution would be to respect the leavening times of the dough. The solution would be to consume only sun-baked cereals from organic farming.
And until the authorities impose real consumer protection measures, the only thing we can do for our health is to avoid ultra-processed foods, obtained from ingredients of unknown origin, through undeclared production methods.
Because what to see, coincidence or not, currently on the label is not mandatory to mention the country of origin for the raw material used in the preparation of a food. It wasn’t enough that we no longer recognize the ingredients in food, now we don’t even know where they come from. And we were still amazed at how we all became intolerant… “, wrote Mihaela Bilic on Facebook.
photo explanation: microscopic study of celiac disease
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