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

Thanks to all of you who have responded-  24 so far- amazing.  Most have
had no difficulty with the product.  All were delighted with it.  Some
had probems with it and regretted having to stop eating the cookies.
Many had good, analytic thoughts about possible causes for our
difficulty.

The story is that Phyllis was hospitalized for major abdominal surgery
in June.  It went well and she is now pretty much recovered.  No
residual problems.  After the surgery and while recieving morphine
intravenously, she experienced a delerium which was so alarming that her
doctors suspected a small stroke.  It gradually cleared and in hindsight
was probably due to morphine.  I say cleared, but she was almost
stuporous for 6 weeks here at home.  During that time, she had no
appetite and slept most of the time.  She had some heartburn.  About all
she ate was Midel cookies- 4 to 6/day.   She lost 25 lbs.  About 6 weeks
ago I realized that her mental symptoms were almost the same as they
were seven years ago when we finally realized with the help of this
list; the efforts of my son who was struggling with undiagnosed celiac;
and from Don Wiss who answered his (Alec's) call for help, posted to the
whole wide world.  Don had installed a filter with key words in his
computer, answered Alec's call and referred him to this list.  He
intuitively knew Don was right.  Moreover, as he got better, he was sure
he knew what was the matter with his mother and so did we within about
48 hours after she was gluten free.  She  had the same rapid recovery
when she stopped the cookies 6 weeks ago.  Both the mental fog and the
heartburn vanished, and her appetite and former quick wit returned.

But the question remains, where did she get the gluten?  (As most of you
know, gluten and casein- milk protein- are broken down into morphine
like peptides in the process of digestion.  In the celiac intestine,
those peptides "leak" into the blood stream and reach the brain in about
20 minutes).  So, there is no milk in Midel cookies- it must be either
the wheat in Xantham gum (some processors use a wheat substrate to grow
the organisms which form the gum) or something else.  I reasoned that
the company or its supplier must have changed its Xantham gum
manufacturing process.  We noted that offending batch was softer than
those we had been eating the previous two months.  One of my respondents
had a similar observation on a batch which she bought probably about the
same time- early June, 2001.  Several other respondents suggested that
Midel, which also makes a wheat containing ginger snap (which it
packages in an almost identical bag), may be having problems with cross
contamination or may have actually packaged a batch incorrectly.  I have
written to the company with my thoughts and I hope they get it
straightened out, as they have good products and otherwise good
contribution to the celiac community.  Also, being non-celiac, I may buy
a bag of those wheat ginger cookies and see if they are soft.  Meantime,
I have a whole case of cookies to get rid of by myself.

Some of the other good thoughts were about the canola oil   0thers
questioned if ginger itself might be toxic ( the experts say no toxicity
other than some tendency to heartburn due to relaxation of the
esophogeal sphincter).  On the whole ginger is used throughout the world
for digestive health.

This is a first draft.  I may have more when I go over this again.
Meantime, I want to answer some of you individually.   Many thanks to
all.  Jack Maines MD (retired) North Creek NY