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Someone asked privately for more info about my statement that pure oats
are gluten-free (under a different subject heading), thought this might
be useful for others also so I'm also posting on CELIAC.

The fact that pure oats are gluten-free doesn't mean you won't react,
because 1) it can be hard to get pure oats and 2) you can be allergic.

The fact that somebody just posted about discovery of an antigen in wheat
that is specific for generating an immune response in celiacs makes me
wonder if celiac shouldn't just be considered a special subcategory of
allergy after all (i.e., an allergic response characterized by unusually
high sensitivity to low levels of the antigen, and also with a more or
less typical syndrome of responses including damage to villi). So maybe
we are just talking about degrees of allergy more than anything else,
with a few special twists.

It certainly would be easier to say to the uninitiated trying to push a
fast-food-joint hamburger bun on you, "I'm severely allergic to wheat and
barley" (maybe hinting that you will drop dead in front of them from a
single crumb....) than to try to explain celiac..... People are familiar
with the idea of some allergies being life-threatening (e.g., peanut and
tree nut and shellfish allergies tend to be so) even from extremely tiny
amounts of the allergenic food. So even if we don't want to stick celiac
in the allergy category, this tactic might be helpful!

Certainly allergics sometimes cross-react or easily develop new allergies
to members of the same food family (e.g., grains). On the rotation diet
to control allergies, it is recommended that members of the same food
family be rotated to prevent new allergies from developing. I've often
felt, when reading this list, that celiacs who focused so exclusively on
corn and rice in particular, day in and day out, might be setting
themselves up for a rollicking case of corn and rice allergy....  Maybe
oat allergy is more common among celiacs than in the general population.
But to be honest, it is far more likely that cross-contamination is
really all it's about.

You do find contradictory info on oats from celiac groups (the US
national organization seems exceptionally rigid for no apparent good
reason). But the simplest evidence is that real celiacs can eat oats if
they are definitely pure oats (no wheat contamination). Also when I make
crackers or tortillas out of individual flours (I have allergies and like
to rotate grains), I find that barley handles much like wheat (that
gluten-y stretchiness of the dough is quite obvious) but oat flour does
not. So I'm not surprised to hear that barley is off limits to celiacs
because of its gluten content (less than for wheat, perhaps, but
definitely there).

But often non-gluten foods are prepared on equipment that also processes
wheat or else wheat flour can be in the air and deposit on the equipment
or the food in process. This makes the whole "are oats gluten-free?"
question moot unless you can find a pure source. Getting whole oats and
picking out stray wheat kernels has worked for some sensitive celiacs,
however. So grinding your own flour can be a major benefit in the pursuit
of gf-ness.

You can read all about oats and celiac in excruciating detail at

http://www.celiac.com/oats.html

This is a list of articles on clinical studies that support the idea that
oats are fine for celiacs (barring an oat allergy) as long as they are
pure oats. The trick is finding pure oats!

                          Peace, Cathy Flick [log in to unmask]