I’d never heard of gluten intolerance less than a decade ago. My grandparents lived to be over 100 years old, and they never had a gluten intolerance.
Before those of you with gluten intolerance get your knickers in a twist, hear me out. According to my research, gluten intolerance isn’t a real thing; it’s a reaction to cheap grain processing and manufacturing.
Don’t Rush Fermentation
Are you familiar with fermentation? Wheat, and other grains rushed through manufacturing processes, have not been properly fermented, and hence, your body reacts negatively.
I include oats in this topic, too, because although oats don’t technically contain gluten, they’re often cross-contaminated with wheat gluten (in America anyway) due to rapid food processing. Think about a quality beer – a good beer is properly fermented, and the wheat used in all manufactured foods needs to be properly processed and allowed to ferment.
This can eliminate epidemic gluten intolerance.
When grains are properly prepared through soaking, sprouting or sour leavening, the friendly bacteria in our bodies get to work, and that means that gluten intolerance shouldn’t be the issue like it is today.
Modern manufacturing techniques of wheat, GMO wheat, oats, barley, some rye, and corn, are at the center of this modern mess. There was no such thing as gluten intolerance less than 30 years ago.
So, what’s changed? And why?
Today, corporations no longer allow wheat to properly ferment when they process it for packaged products. Just like soy, alcohol, and good wine, wheat needs to be properly fermented before it is put on the market.
And, today, GMOs are creating issues people have never digested before.
The wheat my grandparents ate was fermented. And it wasn’t GMO.
It’s Not Gluten – It’s Manufacturing
Today’s concerns about gluten are an issue because of the damage modern manufacturing has done to wheat, but the health effects of original grains are historically beneficial.
As with most altered foods, modern manufacturers have created another “monster” from something that should be naturally benign when produced correctly. Now we are blaming the food source itself, not man’s interventions and GMOs.
Just as humans have destroyed the purity of foods like tuna and salmon due to pollution, mass production, and genetically modified practices, wheat has been adulterated to the point of becoming toxic to your body.
American wheat, corn, and grains have been GMO-d, contaminated, sprayed with pesticides, fertilized with toxic chemicals, and harvested too rapidly – literally. What used to be “processed” by your body is now eaten as expired food, and your body has nothing to process. Instead, your body looks at wheat and gluten as a toxic “by-product” – and this is what’s making people sick.
THIS is gluten intolerance.
So What’s Gluten?
Gluten is actually the family of storage proteins found in wheat, barley, and rye. Gluten proteins are found in mature seed of cereal grasses, which is what we refer to as “grain.”
Close relatives of wheat, such as spelt, kamut, farro, and einkorn, contain gluten and must be avoided if they are not allowed to ferment before being marketed.
Fermentation is so important in the natural production of grains.
Let’s look at the definition of fermentation: n. any of a group of chemical and biochemical reactions that split complex organic compounds into relatively simple substances, especially the anaerobic conversion of sugar to carbon dioxide and alcohol by yeast.
Sounds pretty important to me; so why do American wheat manufacturers leave proper fermentation out of modern wheat processing?
Profits at the expense of your health.
Gluten Is Like Soy
I wrote an article in 2005 about this very same issue with soy when soy was getting the same reputation of no longer being the healthy choice like centuries ago.
Today, Americans have a distorted view of soy, just like wheat, due to a gross misunderstanding of cultural history. Soy, grains (wheat), corn, tuna, salmon, and dairy are now on an endangered species list because they are no longer a natural food source in America.
Let’s set the record straight by examining the core of this problem – the realistic dangers of adulterated food – a “modern” form of food that is not natural because food is no longer allowed the TIME needed to ferment before it is “processed” for the grocery shelf.
The Solution
Limit your consumption of highly-processed wheat and eat foods that are properly fermented. Sprouted organic wheat and grain products are a good place to start.
This typically means that you should avoid fast foods and mass-marketed grain products and enriched products. Buy wheat that is grown and processed “properly“, and from organic sources. Avoid GMO and manufactured, mass-produced wheat products. Limit your daily consumption of wheat, just as you limit your consumption of meats, dairy, salt and sugary foods.
Treat wheat products with scrutiny, especially in America. We do this with tuna, farm-raised salmon, various GMO products, and highly processed dairy. Be cautious when feeding young children highly-processed grains to avoid developing allergies and a gluten intolerance.
Leave the adulterated forms of unfermented grains for the mass-manufacturers to eat.
Let THEM eat cake …
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