How to become Gluten Free

[Dr. Zaus]

Your saying that greater awareness and better reporting account for the huge increase. Well, I can't prove otherwise. I only have my own observations to go on. I just think waiting on definitive proof before caring more about what we eat is even more foolish than making possibly erroneous assumptions regarding over processed foods and gmo's. If I'm wrong, who would be hurt, corporations?

On a higher level I would like to see food additives subject to much better screening processes. In many countries food additives are assumed guilty until proven innocent; it's the other way around in the US.

For example, Azodicarbonamide: a yellow orangish powder, more commonly used commercially in the creation of foamed plastics – like yoga mats, shoe soles, floor mats and window gaskets.

Banned in nearly every other country: Used here for Egg McMuffins

http://foodbabe.com/2013/09/23/are-you-eating-this-ingredient-banned-all-over-the-world/

 

[jagec]

For example, Azodicarbonamide: a yellow orangish powder, more commonly used commercially in the creation of foamed plastics – like yoga mats, shoe soles, floor mats and window gaskets.

Banned in nearly every other country: Used here for Egg McMuffins

And it's still probably the LEAST unhealthy thing in those.

 

[EliteRetard]

I've eaten the sleeve off my shirt once. Seriously.

 

[Ichinisan]

I've eaten the sleeve off my shirt once. Seriously.

Because you're you, I actually believe it.

 

[Blanky]

Reading over the last few dozen posts in this thread all I see are a bunch of people screaming at one another, having multiple conversations unrelated to others' conversations, jabbing in a point here or there. It's quite funny. This is how we debate now with the internet. The number of tangents is breath taking. Nobody here is convincing anybody of anything, just talking for the sake of it.

 

[surfsatwerk]

Carbs are the enemy.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

On a higher level I would like to see food additives subject to much better screening processes. In many countries food additives are assumed guilty until proven innocent; it's the other way around in the US.

For example, Azodicarbonamide: a yellow orangish powder, more commonly used commercially in the creation of foamed plastics – like yoga mats, shoe soles, floor mats and window gaskets.

Banned in nearly every other country: Used here for Egg McMuffins

http://foodbabe.com/2013/09/23/are-you-eating-this-ingredient-banned-all-over-the-world/

Oh look, a foodbabe link. Totally makes you seem legit.

 

[Kaido]

Banned in nearly every other country: Used here for Egg McMuffins

Yes, but Egg McMuffins are delicious, which negates the fact that it may kill you 😀

 

[Kaido]

Carbs are the enemy.

Depends on what your dietary goals are...I don't feel very good on a low-carb diet myself, no energy. Was still able to lose a fair amount of weight eating a lot of potatoes & stuff tho.

 

[Kaido]

Reading over the last few dozen posts in this thread all I see are a bunch of people screaming at one another, having multiple conversations unrelated to others' conversations, jabbing in a point here or there. It's quite funny. This is how we debate now with the internet. The number of tangents is breath taking. Nobody here is convincing anybody of anything, just talking for the sake of it.

That's all Internet discussion boards have ever been though, really - an escape for loneliness & boredom. Professional forums exist for more adult conversations; ATOT is more of just like chatting with your friends about inane stuff. It's just a convenient way to pass the time, which is why you get a myriad of responses & people doing things like asserting that because Buzzfeed quoted some study, then no one could possibly have a negative reaction if they're not a diagnosed Celiac because our food science is perfect 😛

 

[Kaido]

On a higher level I would like to see food additives subject to much better screening processes. In many countries food additives are assumed guilty until proven innocent; it's the other way around in the US.

Won't happen for at least 20 more years. Same concept as tobacco...once the long-term studies say that ingredient X or Y has a proven negative effect on people, then they can do a mass block on selling it. Right now, we have an extremely strong food lobby that blocks stuff from happening like that in the U.S., despite other countries prohibiting the sale of certain ingredients that have a proven track record of problems.

Part of the issue is that not every GMO product or preservative is bad. Some are, some aren't. To further complicate the issue, if you have a food sensitivity, then that could be causing your issues. For a long time I thought I was just allergic to preservatives in general; turns out I have a corn intolerance, which is what they make a lot of preservatives out of. I can handle the non-corn-derived ones just fine, but if I eat dextrose or maltodextrin or ascorbic acid or anything from corn, I get a pounding headache within minutes. It was very frustrating because I struggled with daily headaches for years until removing it from my diet.

So that doesn't necessarily mean that those preservatives are bad, just not compatible for me specifically. Food tech is amazing stuff & we do a lot of really neat things with it, which enables us to store food for long periods of time, make food taste better, create new flavors & taste combinations, etc. So additives & GMO's are something I'm willing to villify in general since it's not a blanket kind of thing...some are good, some are bad.

One interesting one is cellulose...they literally use wood pulp as an ingredient in food, especially low-fat food. There's no documented negative effect on the human digestive system & it makes you feel full after you eat it, without actually bumping up the calories or carbs. Sounds gross, but Americans at least buy that stuff in droves, so it sells!

 

[Phoenix86]

I don't think that will achieve the scale of industrial farming. And, they're targeting a very easy vegetable to produce that way. Try corn in such a setting; probably not going to happen since you can't stack it 7 tiers high. Lettuce works great for aquaponics or hydroponics. Lettuce is not very calorie dense though. Calories = energy. Lights provide energy. Conservation of energy. I'm pretty skeptical that you'll see the bulk of our required daily calories provided by such a system.

I have no issue with the specific crop, in fact, it's one of the better ones. Lettuce is a water heavy crop and guess where we choose to grow almost all our lettuce? CA and AZ.

Not only would this method allow us to grow in water richer areas (don't care about temp/light nearly as much), but I expect it uses significantly less water (flood irrigation D🙂.

It just needs to be scalable.

 

[Kaido]

Magnus: Comparing a cultural and scientific/medical capabilities between the 50s and the 20teens doesn't make sense, here are 4 examples:

1) We are better at detecting allergies
2) We are have more doctors to do the detecting with
3) We are much more affluent, and can afford to go to said doctors
4) We are more tolerant of allergies: we don't just say "tough it out kid"

I'm sure you can come up with your own examples. Might we be seeing the "silent spring" effect, particularly when it comes to autism, but we need to account for the above factors before we jump to blaming GMOs, wheat, vaccines, or the like

I'm curious exactly what the numbers are of both allergy detection rates & allergy affliction rates are. I remember in grade school, there was like one kid out of 400 of us who had a peanut allergy. Now there's a handful of kids in every class, and it seems pretty severe. A lot of kids quit breathing within a few minutes of ingesting an allergen, so it's not really something that is "all in your head" or a tough-it-out thing anymore. A lot of parents I talk to are saying there's at least half a dozen kids with severe medical food allergies in their kid's classes now, which is scary because of how careful everyone has to be now...it's not just that 'one weird kid' anymore. There was a kid with a dairy allergy who just died from eating pancakes recently...it was a simple family trip out for breakfast that ended with horrible results:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...-sues-eatery-death-pancakes-article-1.2151905

There was a story last year about another guy who died after eating a cookie that was made with peanut oil, didn't even have actual peanuts in it:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Allerg...-allergy-dies-eating-cookie/story?id=18723777

There's a dozen other stories like that just in the past year. I don't remember hearing about this stuff growing up. We live in a complex environment, so GMO's & preservatives may not necessarily be the culprit or the sole culprit - could be pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, antiobiotics, growth hormones, microwaves, plastics, any number of things, we just don't know yet. All we know is like what you said...we are now more aware that people have allergies that affect their quality of life.

 

[Phoenix86]

I think me meant "tough it out" for the respiratory allergies, like stuffy nose/sneezing. I doubt they were telling kids who swell up and can't breath to tough it out, even back in the 50s.

How does something made with peanut oil not have peanut in it?

Nothing in your posts refutes higher accuracy of reporting.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

I think me meant "tough it out" for the respiratory allergies, like stuffy nose/sneezing. I doubt they were telling kids who swell up and can't breath to tough it out, even back in the 50s.

How does something made with peanut oil not have peanut in it?

Nothing in your posts refutes higher accuracy of reporting.

As it turns out, you can't be allergic to an entire food. You're allergic to specific things in that food. In this case, peanut allergies are triggered by a protein in the peanut. Peanut oil is filtered and refined, and those proteins are removed. Thus, no allergic reaction.

 

[Ichinisan]

Won't happen for at least 20 more years. Same concept as tobacco...once the long-term studies say that ingredient X or Y has a proven negative effect on people, then they can do a mass block on selling it. Right now, we have an extremely strong food lobby that blocks stuff from happening like that in the U.S., despite other countries prohibiting the sale of certain ingredients that have a proven track record of problems.

Part of the issue is that not every GMO product or preservative is bad. Some are, some aren't. To further complicate the issue, if you have a food sensitivity, then that could be causing your issues. For a long time I thought I was just allergic to preservatives in general; turns out I have a corn intolerance, which is what they make a lot of preservatives out of. I can handle the non-corn-derived ones just fine, but if I eat dextrose or maltodextrin or ascorbic acid or anything from corn, I get a pounding headache within minutes. It was very frustrating because I struggled with daily headaches for years until removing it from my diet.

So that doesn't necessarily mean that those preservatives are bad, just not compatible for me specifically. Food tech is amazing stuff & we do a lot of really neat things with it, which enables us to store food for long periods of time, make food taste better, create new flavors & taste combinations, etc. So additives & GMO's are something I'm willing to villify in general since it's not a blanket kind of thing...some are good, some are bad.

One interesting one is cellulose...they literally use wood pulp as an ingredient in food, especially low-fat food. There's no documented negative effect on the human digestive system & it makes you feel full after you eat it, without actually bumping up the calories or carbs. Sounds gross, but Americans at least buy that stuff in droves, so it sells!

Not saying your symptoms aren't real. How do you know they aren't psychosomatic? For many (most?) people who "discover" such dietary things causing that kind of discomfort, it can be shown that the symptoms (very real symptoms) are psychosomatic.

I know someone who definitely experiences psychosomatic symptoms. A mere suggestion or suspicion almost always leads to 100% "confirmation" in this person's mind. Despite that, the symptoms are very real.

 

[Kaido]

I have no issue with the specific crop, in fact, it's one of the better ones. Lettuce is a water heavy crop and guess where we choose to grow almost all our lettuce? CA and AZ.

Not only would this method allow us to grow in water richer areas (don't care about temp/light nearly as much), but I expect it uses significantly less water (flood irrigation D🙂.

It just needs to be scalable.

I think diversity & scalability are really important. And if they want it to be scalable, it has be cheap, because no one is going to buy a $20 head of lettuce from a special LED grow-light farm. Diversity is important too...I have a somewhat rare corn allergy, which makes living in the United States fairly difficult in terms of what I can eat.

In my corn allergy group, there's a split between people who are sensitive (like me - severe headaches, nose starts running, etc.) & people who are extremely sensitive (i.e. drink from a plant-based plastic water bottle & their lips start swelling up immediately). The people who are extremely sensitive have it really bad because corn is in EVERYTHING thanks to our surplus...it's not just about high-fructose corn syrup; it's in gasoline, packaging, manufacturing agents, animal feed, you name it.

This is the same problem we've run into with wheat...it's a common allergen, so for a lot of people, if you have a lot of exposure to it, you develop an allergy over time. That's kind of the issue with corn right now...it's in your orange juice, your water bottle, your gasoline, your bread, everything, and the number of people with the allergy is growing, possibly because of over-exposure. Again, the problem is we have so many factors, not enough tracking data, and a lot of the things are long-term (like cancer...we know some products like tobacco can cause it, but we don't know 100% of the causes), which is the case with a lot of other allergies.

It does seem like there are a higher percentage of people who are deathly allergic these days though. I'm fortunate that I'm not that sensitive, but if I have a bite of cheese, I throw up non-stop for like two days straight, so it's not that fun either haha 😀

 

[Ichinisan]

I'm curious exactly what the numbers are of both allergy detection rates & allergy affliction rates are. I remember in grade school, there was like one kid out of 400 of us who had a peanut allergy. Now there's a handful of kids in every class, and it seems pretty severe. A lot of kids quit breathing within a few minutes of ingesting an allergen, so it's not really something that is "all in your head" or a tough-it-out thing anymore. A lot of parents I talk to are saying there's at least half a dozen kids with severe medical food allergies in their kid's classes now, which is scary because of how careful everyone has to be now...it's not just that 'one weird kid' anymore. There was a kid with a dairy allergy who just died from eating pancakes recently...it was a simple family trip out for breakfast that ended with horrible results:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...-sues-eatery-death-pancakes-article-1.2151905

There was a story last year about another guy who died after eating a cookie that was made with peanut oil, didn't even have actual peanuts in it:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Allerg...-allergy-dies-eating-cookie/story?id=18723777

There's a dozen other stories like that just in the past year. I don't remember hearing about this stuff growing up. We live in a complex environment, so GMO's & preservatives may not necessarily be the culprit or the sole culprit - could be pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, antiobiotics, growth hormones, microwaves, plastics, any number of things, we just don't know yet. All we know is like what you said...we are now more aware that people have allergies that affect their quality of life.

You didn't hear about much before the information age took off. Before people became aware of such conditions.

 

[Kaido]

I think me meant "tough it out" for the respiratory allergies, like stuffy nose/sneezing. I doubt they were telling kids who swell up and can't breath to tough it out, even back in the 50s.

How does something made with peanut oil not have peanut in it?

Nothing in your posts refutes higher accuracy of reporting.

Actually, that was one of the most frustrating parts of growing up - my nose was always either running or stuffy, drove me BANANAS! Doctors just said it was just hayfever...every day, all day, year round, in the 'burbs 😛

No sorry, I guess I wasn't clear - I meant the cookie didn't have peanuts in it (like a peanut you chew on), so it wasn't readily obvious to the guy who was eating it because it's not like he bit into a peanut - it was cooked with peanut oil, which isn't something that tastes like peanut butter when you eat it:

died last Friday after eating a cookie that contained peanut oil.

Note that some places like Five Guys cook exclusively with peanut oil, so places like that would be a deathtrap for people with severe peanut allergies, and if you were to bring them a hamburger from there, it's not like it has a peanut taste or anything.

 

[Kaido]

You didn't hear about much before the information age took off. Before people became aware of such conditions.

Yeah but there was still the news & stuff. It seems like I hear about someone dying from eating something every week these days. Maybe just better reporting, who knows.

 

[Ichinisan]

(like cancer...we know some products like tobacco can cause it, but we don't know 100% of the causes)

Cancer is any genetic mutation that develops while cells reproduce that causes descendant cells to reproduce uncontrollably. There are countless ways a DNA transcription error can result in out-of-control reproduction.

So, the main "cause" of cancer is anything that causes lots of cells to die and get replaced. A higher rate of death and regeneration means more DNA transcription errors over time. Eventually, one of those transcription errors will cause out of control reproduction and a cancerous tumor grows.

Basically, absolutely everything causes cancer -- and that's not hyperbole. Your body has to process anything that you put into it. Whatever cells get worn during the processing / metabolizing of that substance have a chance of becoming cancerous.

 

[Kaido]

Not saying your symptoms aren't real. How do you know they aren't psychosomatic? For many (most?) people who "discover" such dietary things causing that kind of discomfort, it can be shown that the symptoms (very real symptoms) are psychosomatic.

I know someone who definitely experiences psychosomatic symptoms. A mere suggestion or suspicion almost always leads to 100% "confirmation" in this person's mind. Despite that, the symptoms are very real.

Could be argued either way I guess. Physically, I always had allergic shiners (dark circles under my eyes), pale skin (anemic), running or stuffy nose, mild eczema, etc. plus I just always felt like crap - no energy, constant headaches & migraines, had no idea it was food-allergy related, just lived with it for years unknowingly. I have since removed those from my diet & all that stuff went away, and if I eat it, it comes back. I would say there's probably a 4-way split with food allergies:

1. People who are severely allergic & have to go to the hospital or take an Epipen, or get super-sick (ex. Celiac's)

2. People who have an intolerance - you don't die, but you feel like crap. Sort of like the difference between people who get stung by a bee & die, vs. the people who get stung by a bee & swell up like a balloon (as opposed to people who just get a small red bump), but don't die.

3. People with suggestion-based psychosomatic "allergies" who have a strong belief that X, Y, or Z causes symptoms in them. This is probably the same group who are sensitive to microwaves or wifi signals or whatever. Healthy food nuts are also in this category...Jimmy Kimmel did a hilarious experiment where he made juice out of Skittles & Tang and marketed it as like non-GMO freshly-squeezed juice & people were totally buying into it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75b2hTl2T2E

4. People who do it to be, ah, "special snowflakes", either for attention or for weight loss purposes, or for some kind of vague health benefit.

Part of the problem is that our medical technology is not good enough to diagnose everything yet. For example, I don't react to any medical testing for dairy - skin-prick test, blood tests, etc. But if I drink milk, within minutes I get severe nausea, black circles under my eyes, tongue gets coated white, etc., and this happened growing up, before I made the connection to food as a cause, so it's not like someone said "this has milk" and then I went into a 'reaction', I just felt like crap constantly & didn't know why. But it's not like we have an off-the-shelf test for diagnosing a headache with a blood test or something, so it's really hard to make the correlation between an internal reaction & a food allergy without simply doing an elimination diet.

I'm sure at some point, they'll figure out more advanced testing methods, but it's also important to realize there's different groups - people who need attention, people who are hypochondriacs, people who are sensitive but not deathly allergic, and people who will basically die if they don't get treatment ASAP. So it's not like it's just one lump category of "it is or it isn't" because it's not that clear-cut. If you personally feel fine when you eat say gluten or dairy, it's easy to jump on the Internet bandwagon of "a gluten intolerance is fake!", but that could just be because the person you've been dealing with IRL who makes that claim is a hypochondriac. I've been to several top allergists & they've all said that the field is still developing & their tests are not very accurate yet; stuff like peanuts or dairy that cause an immediate skin or anaphylactic reaction are very easy to diagnose, but the rest are not. I'm sure someday the technology will advance, but we're not there yet, so that combined with the different levels of allergy (whether it's in your head or not) make for some interesting online discussion 😉

 

[Kaido]

As it turns out, you can't be allergic to an entire food. You're allergic to specific things in that food. In this case, peanut allergies are triggered by a protein in the peanut. Peanut oil is filtered and refined, and those proteins are removed. Thus, no allergic reaction.

Not always - that's only true for some people. For example, you can remove the protein from corn & still have a reaction to it. A lot of companies have started marketing items as "Corn-free" by simply removing the protein from the corn derivatives, but most people still react because it's an allergy to all of it, not just the protein. But then there's the flip side, like with gluten - I can handle wheat-based distilled vinegar because they've removed the gluten from it (> 20ppm or whatever the number is) & it's not an allergy to the whole item, just a specific part. Same with peanuts. I know people who can handle peanut oil, and I know people who can't. Depends on what you can tolerate, whether it's a protein allergy, a "levels" allergy (re: 20ppm or less with gluten, unless you're Celiac), or an allergy to the whole thing.

Like for me, it's pretty easy to tell when I've ingested corn because it feels like I've swallowed knives - like if I have soda or ketchup (corn syrup), my stomach feels like a bag of razor blades. Oh, and it's the same with milk too - there's different levels of allergies. Some people are only lactose intolerant & can take a pill or drink Lactaid. Some people are allergic only to cow's milk. I am unfortunately allergic to all animal milk (including casein, whey, and lactose), so cow's milk, goat's milk, and sheep's milk (and cheese and ice cream and whatnot) puts me in severe pain for days. So while goat's milk is nasty (imo), goat cheese is actually pretty amazing, but I have the unfortunate problem of having breathing problems and throwing up after ingestion 😀

 

[Phoenix86]

As it turns out, you can't be allergic to an entire food. You're allergic to specific things in that food. In this case, peanut allergies are triggered by a protein in the peanut. Peanut oil is filtered and refined, and those proteins are removed. Thus, no allergic reaction.

Who knew? Not being allergic, not me. I see it all over the place as a warning and figured allergic to peanuts=allergic to peanut oil. The more you know...

 

[sourceninja]

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