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Chris Dye at <[log in to unmask]>
 
>My consultant, who has a world-wide reputation for
>treating food allergies (mentioned in American books!) is quite happy for
>Coeliacs to eat wheat starch providing it complies with the code.  ....
> My consultant said that the USA
>had done little research into CD whereas Europe had and consequently
>Americans were rather more conservative.
 
Chris, the differences between UK and American policies on wheat
starch are based upon very real scientific problems, not lack of
American research.  Americans could read European journal articles
on Celiac, if the right research existed.  The problem is that no
research study, in any country, has "proven" a safe lower limit
of gluten consumption.  It turns out to be a difficult research problem.
It is difficult to find many volunteers to knowingly consume
possibly harmful amounts of gluten, and it is difficult to prove
that a particular amount of gluten is safe when there are so many
systems within the body which could be impacted by gluten.
 
Several months ago, the Listowners put up a 15 page discussion
of this very issue by members of CEL-PRO, the professional
discussion group for celiac clinicians and researchers.  This
discussion can be retrieved by sending an email to
[log in to unmask] with the body
GET CELIAC MXGLUTEN, or by visiting Ted Hodge's WWW site:
 
http://www.fastlane.net/homepages/thodge/archive.htm
 
Bill Elkus
Los Angeles