<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> In a belated answer to the question about the paper on papain digestion of gluten by Messer et al in Gut (5), 295-303 (1964), the paper does not suggest that eating papain will allow a celiac person to eat gluten. The authors confirmed an earlier report that long PREdigestion (42 hours) of gluten with a huge excess of crude papain would make it non-toxic when ingested by a celiac. They showed that pure papain did not detoxify gluten and suggested that detoxification was brought about by an enzyme, a contaminant in crude papain, that released ammonia from gluten. This was one of the early bits of suggestive evidence that glutamine-containing peptide sequences were important in accounting for gliadin toxicity in celiacs. Since the authors indicated that the detoxifying enzyme was both inactive and unstable in the highly acid co;nditions existing in the stomach, there is no way that papain ingestion will permit celiacs to eat gluten-containing food. On Fri, 27 Jan 1995, Don Wiss wrote: > Some time back an uncle of mine (a conservative southerner) send me > the July 1991 issue of "Alternatives - For The Health Conscious > Individual" (by Mountain Home Publishing). In it there was the > following paragraph: > Taking papain [a protein-digesting enzyme in papaya] supplements > (500 to 1,000 mg with meals) can help digest wheat gluten. It often > works so well that with supplementation many celiac disease > patients can once again eat wheat products without problems! (Gut > 64;5:295-303) Papain can be a godsend to those people who > meticulously have to avoid wheat-containing products. > > My question is what did the Gut article really say?