<<Disclaimer:  Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>

There is much confusion in terminology when it comes to gluten. Here is the
way I understand it.

 The term gluten in reference to the cohesive, elastic protein mass
remaining after starch is washed from a dough goes back to Beccari in 1745.
Strictly speaking, gluten is found only in wheat because it is difficult to
wash a cohesive protein mass even from rye, the closest relative to wheat,
let alone from barley or oats or anything else.  Unfortunately, a misuse of
the term by the corn industry has become common in recent years. It has
become fairly common to call corn storage proteins "corn gluten."
Personally, I think there is no justification for such usage.  Corn may
contain prolamins, as does wheat, but gluten--no way!  When it comes to
celiac disease, a similar corruption of the term has become very common.
There are certain related proteins in wheat, rye, and barley that give rise
to particular peptides during digestion that are capable of triggering the
responses typical of celiac disease.  Only in the case of wheat can these be
strictly considered to be derived from the gluten proteins.  But for lack of
a suitable term, patients and their physicians began speaking of gluten-free
or gluten-containing foods.  People ask me, "How much gluten is there in
quinoa?"  I have to translate this into, "Are there any harmful peptide
sequences in the proteins of quinoa?"  There is nothing in quinoa that is
like gluten prepared from a wheat flour dough, which has an unusual, perhaps
unique, viscoelastic character.  Anyway, as far as we know, corn does not
seem to cause harm to celiac patients.  Corn has not been studied in the
extensive way that wheat has in relation to celiac disease, but for 40+
years patients and their physicians have seemed to agree that corn is OK.
The sequences in the corn zein (prolamin) fraction are suspicious, but they
do differ in an apparently crucial way from the protein sequences of the
wheat gliadin (prolamin) fraction.  So, I have to admit that there have been
no modern biopsy based studies of the effects of purified corn proteins on
the celiac intestine as there have been for wheat, but the mass of evidence
still seems to point in the direction of corn being safe for celiac patients.

Disclaimer: The above is my opinion, it should not be considered definitive
in a legal sense nor should it be considered medical advice by anyone.

Don Kasarda, Albany, CA