Gluten addiction and overdose

I was talking to a friend earlier and we got on the topic of gluten intolerance.

I have a number of friends/family members who can't tolerate even the slightest amounts of wheat. I had a friend over a few years ago and we were walking through my yard--her son couldn't even touch the wheat stalks. There are a number of problems, though.

Wheat, in its natural form, is very filling with a lot of nutrients.

In the mid 1900's, scientists began deliberately crossing wheat with other grasses in order to make it more economically feasible--shorter stalks, less bulk, more energy put into wheat production rather than leaf and stalk, more wheat per stalk, resistant to fungus and disease, etc.

One side effect of these changes was a massive increase in the amount of gluten in the wheat, which made it rise more easily and with less effort. Demand for the altered wheat increased, to the point that the majority of the wheat commonly used today is descended from these crosses. You can still get "heirloom" wheat, but it's more difficult to find. It also won't rise as well. Some older grains have as little as 3% gluten, while modern bread flours have many times more.

The habit of adding gluten to baked goods is an additional risk. Many flours have gluten added as part of processing, and people add gluten in the form of "dough enhancers" when they bake.

This results in something I call gluten overdose.

The human body is designed to function on a hunter-gatherer diet--lots of exercise, plain water, meat, herbs and seeds. This includes the ancient relatives of wheat. We are supposed to eat this stuff. It's part of our makeup. But if your diet was 90% meat, enhanced with protein powders, protein drinks and protein supplements, you wouldn't stay healthy for long. The body is simply not designed to handle overdoses on that level.

If your diet was 90% watermelon, supplemented by green food powders (not so many options in this direction, but you get the point) you wouldn't stay healthy for long.

And yet we seem to think that we can live majority on grains that have been supplemented with a product nature doesn't produce in those quantities and it won't affect us, our digestive systems, or our genes.

Our society, in my opinion, suffers from a gluten overdose. Those sensitive to these substances are getting sick, and it's gumming up the digestive systems of the rest. Depressed immune systems because of bad dietary choices result in even more, and more violent, "allergic reactions" to the substances causing the problems.

Celiacs is real. Gluten intolerance is real. What I think we've mostly been missing is the link between quantity and overdose.