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I have a scientific and personal dilemma with respect to the products that
are offered on the website that imports Scandinavian baking mixes. Yes, I
firmly believe that the mixes meet the Norwegian standards which also meet
the European standards. In terms on whether or not these products are
advisable for celiacs, I think that the UK celiac site sums things up pretty
well, at least from a European perspective:
http://www.coeliac.co.uk/glutenfree_living/eating_and_shopping/78.asp:"Codex
wheat starch (the special washed wheat starch that has had the
gluten removed to a level within the Codex standard) can be tolerated
by the majority of people with coeliac disease, although these products will
be labelled as containing wheat. Some people are more sensitive than others
to this low level of gluten and have symptoms if they eat products
containing Codex wheat starch. Those people who react to Codex wheat starch
need to choose products labelled as both gluten and wheat free."

There are a couple of studies from Finland  that show long-term ingestion of
products containing wheat starch is not harmful to celiacs: *
http://tinyurl.com/2phb6m* <http://tinyurl.com/2phb6m> and
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12622768?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVAbstractPlus>
*http://tinyurl.com/2mhsfv.*

Although my left brain is totally happy with the science, the right brain
would not buy or consume products containing wheat starch. Why eat wheat
starch when I don't have to? There are lots of good things to eat that never
contained gluten in the first place. What happens if a batch is accidentally
defective? Has that ever happened before in the food industry? Besides, I am
not sure that I consider beet fiber something I would like to find in my
bread. I guess the Norwegian bread with beet fiber is miles better than the
bamboo fiber and methylcellulose found in some US bread products. Neither of
those two components is ever found naturally in human food.

All of this gets down to a matter of personal choice at the end of the day,
and we don't need to start flames on the topic. Some people will want this
product and others won't. But the good news is that the bread is probably
not going to hurt people.

Vic-Sunnyvale, CA

Visit the Celiac Web Page at Http://www.enabling.org/ia/celiac/index.html
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