Just for fun - saw this US website about wheat and gliadin. It is allegedly taken from a best selling book and thought that it might be an inspiration for those who are desperately trying to follow a coeliac diet. We cannot have wheat but here are some of the side effects healthy people get whilst having wheat in their daily diet .. I think that this may be of help to some of you who are struggling and missing wheat .. I hope that by reading a paragraph or two or may be a little every day it will help you to see that may be we're not missing it quite so much.
I meant also to add the following which mentions coeliacs and how a person is thankful for coeliacs raising awareness to both wheat and gluten. The author has added a review taken from Amazon written by someone who is finding health benefits to being both wheat and gluten free:
I like your attitude lynxcat, it's the way to deal with adversity in my book.
Today I was by an estuary and a nice big sign has been erected saying:
''Please do not feed the Swans white bread as it can lead to serious vitamin deficiency and this is especially important with younger and older birds''
It cracked me up as I thought what about humans???
So apart from the fear of foods I think that we as coeliac have the potential for a much more nutritious diet than your average wheatie.
Another little observation that springs to mind which has made me curious over the last few years is - in the 50's, 60's and 70's ... I along with most of the population ate a considerable more food than what we do now - always breakfast, often a snack followed by lunch which for school children in our area was soup, main course and an ample pudding - then at home time there would be fruit and biscuits followed by an evening meal and pudding then a supper of a full fat milky drink such as Horlicks or Ovaltine before bed. Yet we were all amazingly thin. Then came the 80's and something happened - and now most people are struggling with weight issues. This has puzzled me for a long, long time!!
I think that this is a really interesting topic ''our social history''
And you are right we did have cooked breakfasts bottles of full cream milk at play time cooked lunch etc.
What we did not have was super refined highly processed foods and just think back to the supermarkets that we had until their socio/economic explosion which started in the 1980's. And we had supermarkets like Fine Fare which were more a large self service grocery store and I remember when we could buy pie's and pasty's from our local bakers or a tinned 'Fray Bentos' pie from grocery stores. So we ate a lot more food that was home made thus natural and unadulterated so for instance a beef stew had plenty of beef in it. Nowadays you can buy a microwave meal like beef stew and it may contain 6% beef!
So on one level we have lost touch with what we are really eating and the quantity of treat foods like chocolate and ice cream, biscuits and crisps etc consumed is now phenomenal compared to the 60's and 70's.
Also we used to walk to school and play outside nowadays children would rather watch a video or play a computer game than run around outside. We used to walk to the shops and carry our groceries home now we drive a hypermarket and the car takes the strain.
My friend and I looked after someone else's dog and we took the dog to a park /recreation ground and it was a lovely spring afternoon my my friend grabbed my arm and she said where is everyone? there were less than 6 other people all with dogs in an area of 3x football pitches! And I said they are surfing in their bedrooms. On the way home we went past a house and this loud electronic noise followed by children cheering came from an upstairs window and I said that's where they are.
So it is more about the amount of calories we eat and burn off and how our lifestyles have changed and how we are influenced by slick advertising.
Lastly through slick advertising we have been made to see preparing food as a chore when in reality it is the automatic washing machine and vacuum cleaners that have liberated housework. And to make my point I have a chippy just around the corner from me and yet I can make a batter dip a piece of fish in it chip a potato and deep fry it quicker than I can walk to the chippy and que for fish n' chips. And mines gf, so it's all to do with our perception of preparing food.
This is one of my favourite subjects so I'm sorry for going on.
Hi Jerry, Not sure if it is quite so straightforward as this. My bone of contention has always been the hours and hours and hours of homework that has become the norm for state schools to set. I can remember when my children got to about ten years of age the homework began to increase and their play time outside in the fresh air began to decrease. Year on year this pattern became more so. Homework took priority over health. As they became older homework often went well into the night every night of the week .. no time for physical activity - in fact, no time for life itself. Everything but school and school work is stifled. What is more, it impacts on the whole family.
I think a good solution would be to follow the public school lead on this, as school lunch time has diminished from one hour thirty minutes as it was in the 60's and 70's to between twenty minutes and half-hour today - perhaps the time has come to have a 'homework' hour after school on the premises. This in public school, I believe is called 'prep' - then when a child or young adult leaves the school premises they also leave the school work behind them at the school gates. They could then have time to play, take up sport and do what children and young adults need to do to stay lean and healthy.
We ask our children of today to do something no adult would consider doing ... work all day, late afternoon, early evening, late evening and part of the night!
Of course, food and food quality does come into the equation but time is something that could be changed immediately. I can't tell you how many nights at 2.00 am in the morning, in the past, I have had conversations concerning homework of 'can't you just leave it?' It is absolute lunacy!!
Added to the thoughts on highly processed food that contain almost everything but food in their contents - I wonder if at some point in the future we will learn that some of what is put into water supplies may also have issues on our health. I sometimes wonder whether ingestion of flouride over a life-time may at some time cause concerns in the future, as although it is allegedly strengthening our teeth it is also creeping into the rest of our bodies. Added to this are all the medications that are excreted in urine, flushed down the toilet and end up in water supplies ... though perhaps this is a thought too far!! Lol!!
Hi Lynxcat, I do over simplify things so that's a fair comment.
I think that a problem is that a junk food meal and a fizzy sugary drink can contain enough calories for the whole day. And if someone is thirsty and they have a large glass of cola containing the equivalent of 6 to 8 teaspoons of sugar they are not doing their waist line any favours.
The one thing that does worry me is growth hormones fed to battery animals and the effect that these growth hormones have on our bodies.
What really saddens me is that according to nutritionists the vast majority of obese people are over fed and under nourished so their bodies are crying out for more!
I also think that it is a very complex subject because humans probably survived by putting on a bit of fat for the lean months and that doesn't apply nowadays.
There was an interesting article on the radio last week about how little some children play out doors and according to a survey by Persil only 24% of children play out side regularly compared to over 50% of their parents
All of these are good points, Jerry and I think it is very difficult for any of us that either think we eat healthily or at least do our best to eat healthily to really comprehend how others actually eat from day to day. Often when people share the information as to what they and their families personally eat - their daily menus - it makes you realise how marvellous the human body is because it shows that man can survive on almost anything if he has to almost like rats - I suppose this is why the human race has spread into every corner of the globe. Of course, the result of eating almost anything is not a good thing and will at some point impact upon mankind in the future - not just in obesity but probably in many other aspects.
I too am horrified by the amount of animal medicines and artificial hormones that are being passed onto us via the food chain.
When I was younger I visited a farm where pigs were kept in an indoor building. The pigs were grouped together all in one large pen, they were fed pm pigswill which I'm sure that you know is left overs that have been boiled up in a giant vat and produces a type of porridge made from peelings, rancid meat, cabbage stalks, bread,cakes, buscuits, etc and in some cases maggots. On the outside the pigs would look amazingly healthy - their tails curled, their eyes bright (for pigs are the only animals that have bright eyes and when you look into them they look .. human) their snouts nice and wet, their trotters high. What shocked me though was what the pigs did ..... when one of the pigs went to the toilet - either sort - the rest would gather around its bottom and eat and drink from it. They were not hungry or thirsty as food and drink were readily available but the shock of seeing this behaviour pattern has remained with me ever since!
I've brought the book from Amazon and found that it explained so much and made so much sense.
I have all the sysmpstoms of being Coeliac but got a negative test result.However I'm one of those who although not diagnosed have to avoid wheat in particular at all costs.
and if more people appreciated how much our foods are processed/genetically enginered/mucked about with then its no bad thing.
Hi Ruth, This is how I started out - wheat caused me problems and even when I eventually had the blood test and my doctor told me that I was a coeliac ...... I found it hard to believe - I was convinced it was just the wheat which was causing all of my problems. Over time however I eventually realised that my condition was worsening and although rye at first seemed to cause no harm it suddenly left me with bouts of violent sickness so bad that the skin peeled from the top of my mouth and throat.
So, although you may not currently be a confirmed coeliac, just take note and if you find other symptoms arising, even if they are small - like an unexpected headache after consuming gluten then it may be time to have the blood test taken again.
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Wheat Mutated to Survive
Wheat Intolerant 
How do I learn more about wheat intolerance but NOT gluten ?
Interesting article about why everyone should avoid wheat.
