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Hi
You may recall I enquired awhile ago about the difference of opinion
between North American and UK groups about malt flavouring.  I finally
had a response from Kellog's in the UK stating that rice krispies are
gluten free.  I forwrded that message to a couple of people on this list
to ask advice.  Bill Elkus suggested I forward some responses to the
list.

What follows is Don Kasarda's response to Kellog's:

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Date: Sat, 11 Jul 98 17:45:26 +0100
From: "Donald D. Kasarda" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]

Dear Michael,

I have been asked to comment on your reply to Bev Lewis about the
absence of gluten (or the barley equivalent) in malt flavoring.  I am a
cereal chemist who is sometimes asked for advice in regard to the
gluten proteins as they relate to celiac disease by celiac patient
organizations.  I have provided advice to Kellogg in the past in regard
to safe processing of a rice cereal (Kenmei) in order to avoid
contamination.  Kenmei has since been discontinued by the company.

While it is possible that the malt flavoring you refer to is free of
all harmful peptides, your statement that because the flavoring is a
water wash of malt, it is free of gluten is not in itself completely
satisfying for the following reasons.

At present, we are pretty sure that peptides derived from gliadin
proteins and consisting of as few as 12 amino acids can be toxic.
These small peptides are sometimes quite water soluble as well.  When
malt is prepared by germination of barley, hydrolytic enzymes break
down the harmful (to celiac patients) hordein proteins.  It is possible
that some of the resulting peptides are small enough to be water
soluble, but large enough to retain harmful activity in celiac disease.
A peptide of molecular weight no greater than about 1300 could
potentially still be active in celiac disease.

Therefore, the water wash could pick up harmful hordein peptides.
Furthermore, unless the wash was centrifuged or filtered to clarify it,
it could pick up small amounts of suspended particles that could
contain hordein proteins or fragments of them that resulted from the
protease action during germination.

The amounts of harmful peptides or proteins that end up in a
malt-flavored cereal might well be insignificant for celiac patients,
for, after all, the amounts in the wash are likely to be small and the
amount of flavoring added to the cereal is probably a small part of the
total solids.  My main point is that some transfer of harmful peptides
to the water wash could occur and unless your researchers have studied
this question and have some basis for concluding that the amounts are
insignificant (other than because a water wash was used), perhaps it
would be best to indicate that some uncertainty still exists.

Incidentally, my suspicion is that there is not enough of the harmful
peptides in Rice Krispies to cause harm to celiac patients, but for me
it is only a suspicion in that I know of no experimental measurements
or calculations in regard to the question and we still do not have a
really solid indication of how little of the harmful proteins or
peptides is OK for celiac patients on a daily basis.

Sincerely,

Don Kasarda
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Here is Bill's response to Kellog's:

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To: [log in to unmask],
    [log in to unmask]
From: [log in to unmask]
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 03:42:01 -0700

Dear Michael,

Don Kasarda sent me a copy of the email about malt in your cereal
product, and I thought I would add some thoughts about the amount of
gluten which a Celiac can safely tolerate.  Unlike Don, I have no
technical expertise in this area.  I am the parent of a Celiac, and as
a volunteer activity assist in the administration of two internet
discussion groups on the topic, one for Celiacs (at StJohns University)
and the other for physicians (at Princeton).

The physicians group had an extensive discussion on this topic which we
have edited and (with their permission) posted for anyone to read.  If
you send an email to [log in to unmask] with the body GET
CELIAC MXGLUTEN this file will be sent to you.

To summarize some of the thinking from this file, and from our
experiences administering the daily discussions of almost 3,000
celiacs:

a) There is no proven lower safe limit of gluten consumption per day
for a Celiac, although most celiac experts agree in theory that such a
limit should exist.  Finding volunteers for an experiment which is
potentially harmful is very difficult.  It is also very difficult to
prove a negative "no damage" since there are so many possible systems
within the body which could be impacted.

b) Many Celiacs, particularly in America, have a zero gluten tolerance
policy.  Whether this is a good idea or not, it is a fact, and so if
your product has a measurable amount of gluten I think these people
would at least like to know about it.  If you can quantify the amount
of gluten this would be particularly helpful.

c) To quantify the range of safety, I observe that most celiac experts
in the discussion seem to feel that amounts below 10 mg of gluten per
day are safe, and amounts in excess of 100 mg per day are questionable
to harmful.  This can be important.  As a example, Honey'd Corn Flakes,
made by a Canadian manufacturer who wanted to claim its product was
gluten free, turned out to have possible gluten contamination well
below 0.01 mg per bowl of cereal (they have since changed the formula
to remove even this).  This was so far below the amounts typically
discussed that many from the zero tolerance camp felt it was
essentially zero.

Bill Elkus
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Here is Kellog's response to me:

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Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 16:04:18 -0400
From: [log in to unmask] (Michael Coupland)
To: [log in to unmask]

     Dear Bev,

     Since your last email I have recieved a number of messages from Bill
     Elkus, Don Kasarda and others within the company.

     First of all I must apologise if my reply was misleading. The problem
     is that here in the U.K. the Coeliacs Society has classed products,
     including Rice Krispies, as being suitable for coeliacs. There are
     traces of gluten, but the Coeliacs Society advise that this level
     would only effect those who are super-sensitive and the advice is not
     to cut the malt flavouring/malt wash products from a diet unless
     recommended by a Gastroenterologist. This is mainly due to the fact
     that many coeliacs who do can suffer from Osteoperosys (brittle bones)
     because of the resulting reduced calcium intake.

     Having said that, this is only for the United Kingdom. Southern
     Ireland - like North America - supports the zero tolerance attitude
     and does not recommend any Kellogg's products, or other malt
     containing cereals.

     It is a very contentious issue across the world and I can understand
     your annoyance at the conflicting information supplied by both food
     specialists and the different Kellogg's departments.

     I hope that a personal resolution can be reached for your daughter and
     thank you for bringing these issues to the fore-front at this time.

     Yours,

     Mike Coupland
     Consumer Services, U.K.
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Bev in London, ON