<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>
 
Ginny <[log in to unmask]> said:
 
>Last night I ate a pickle which I bought at a store.  They were
>stored in a barrel so they did not have any ingredients on it.  I
>know I should know better but I took the chance.  I was up at 4:00am
>very sick.  I'm sure they must have been made with distilled vinegar.
 
>Am I super sensitive?  Is part of it because I have been off
>distilled vinegar for many years?  Why is this on the allowed list in
>Canada when it is so obvious to me that I can not tolerate it?  Can
>someone help me understand this?
 
While I personally avoid distilled vinegar products for my celiac son,
this is a very controversial area in the Celiac world.  A number of
respected scientists, including Don Kasarda, feel strongly that the
amount of gluten (if any) in distilled vinegar would be far too small to
cause a problem.  Many celiacs disagree with this, they insist that
they have had reactions to foods with distilled grain vinegar, and so
some celiac societies allow it, and others do not.
 
Of course, another possibility is that there was something else you
ate that day which accidentally had enough gluten to bother you,
or that there was something else in the pickle (or the rest of the meal)
which bothered you having nothing to do with celiac.  As a parent,
whenever my Celiac son has any type of upset stomach or g/i
symptoms, I automatically think first about gluten.  But my non-celiac
daugther (periodically blood tested for celiac, always negative)
sometimes gets diarrhea or a tummy ache and when she does, I
consider the conventional non-celiac causes.
 
Bill Elkus
Los Angeles