A Gluten Story, Part 2

Gluten can be eaten by itself and has become a common substitute for meat and tofu. It is particularly popular in Asia, where is goes by the name seitan and is often steamed, fried, or baked.

An interesting twist to this story comes when we start looking at the amount of gluten added to industrially made bread. (To read part 1, please visit here. ) Most of the bread in the U.S. is made by replacing hydration, fermentation, and kneading with artificial additives and huge industrial mixers. ^{Image Credit}

In the nineteenth century steel rollers and industrial mills replaced stones in the wheat grinding process. Steel was fast, efficient, and easy to maintain. Millers discarded the germ and the bran in the wheat kernel, along with most of the vitamins, fiber, and most of its healthy fats.

Most bakers include an additive called vital wheat gluten, made by washing wheat flour with water until the starches dissolve, to strengthen the dough and help the load rise. According to the New Yorker, "In general, the higher the protein content of wheat, the more gluten it contains." Vital wheat gluten is a powdered, concentrated form of gluten that is found naturally in all bread. The extra gluten is added to provide the strength and elasticity necessary for it to endure industrial mixing. ^{Image Credit}

Chemically, vital wheat gluten is identical to regular gluten - but some worry it's a crutch to add storage and functionality to the final product. Even though it doesn't add flavor it's added to pastas, snacks, cereals, and even some cosmetics. According to scientists at The Bread Lab in Washington, it makes bread taste like mush.

The FDA defines bread as being made of flour, yeast, and a moistening ingredient, usually water. Bleached flour uses chemicals like acetone peroxide, chlorine, and benzoyl peroxide (still to be determined if bread will treat your breakout). Other possible ingredients include shortening, sweeteners, ground dehulled soybeans, coloring, and potassium bromate.

It's not possible to manufacture, package, and ship large amounts of industrially made whole-grain bread without adding something to strengthen the dough. Even "healthy" whole-wheat breads are packed with gluten under various ingredient names such as "whole-wheat flour, water, wheat gluten, and wheat fiber." ^{Image Credit}

There is a gluten-free movement happening in America. Sales of gluten-free products have doubled in the past five years and more than two hundred million dishes were ordered gluten free (also in the past 5 years?). While products started out only being sold in small boutique stores, they are now easily found in popular nation-wide chains. But the diet can be unhealthy, loaded with ingredients such as rice starch, cornstarch, tapioca starch, and potato starch. These contain highly refined carbohydrates and release at least as much sugar into the bloodstream as the foods given up. When it comes down to it, when the good things that sell food (salt, fat, and gluten) are removed more of another is added to keep it tasty. Gluten-free cake is still cake.

Although "gluten-free" is probably just another fad diet, large-scale, long-term testing should be done to look at the effect of added gluten in American diets but we won't have the answer for years. In the meantime, those who do have celiac disease have options, because who wants to go their whole life without pizza?

This blog is adapted from "Against The Grain"