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I'd like to say there is no answer and leave it at that.... but since I was the one who brought this up, I feel I should try and say something....

Generally, it is held that "distilled" products are safe for celiacs, while "brewed" products are not. Beer and soy sauce are brewed (fermented), leaving the ingredients intact. Vinegar and alcohol are distilled with only the evaporated distillate being used as final product.

Ann Whelan, publisher of Gluten Free Living magazine has studied the issue of distilled vinegar quite thoroughly. When I asked her if any testing had been done she replied, "the only testing worth mentioning was conducted by a Dr. Campbell in Canada quite a number of years ago. He is the one who concluded that a celiac would have to consume at least 20 liters of vinegar a day to approach the amount of possible gluten in distilled vinegar that might be dangerous. Obviously that amount of vinegar would not be consumed and if it were might be more dangerous than any amount of gluten."

There are many many very reputable sources who claim that distilled vinegar is safe for celiacs. Basically, the gluten molecules are too large to carry over through the distillation process. This is the theory to which most celiacs adhere, and which all current gluten-free dietary guidelines recommend.  And to me, this makes the most sense.

Here is an example -- an excerpt from an article posted at celiac.com about three or four years ago:

Celiac.com 12/10/2000 - As reported in Ann Whelan's September/October issue of Gluten-Free Living, the American Dietetic Association (ADA) has released the 6th edition of its Manual of Clinical Dietetics, which offers revised guidelines for the treatment of celiac disease. This manual is currently used by hospitals and doctors all over North America, and represents the most up-to-date source of information with regard to the dietary treatment of various illnesses ...... A team of American and Canadian dietitians wrote the new gluten-free guidelines, including: Shelley Case, RD, Mavis Molloy, RD, Marion Zarkadas, M.Sc.RD (all from Canada and all members of the Professional Advisory Board of the Canadian Celiac Association), and Cynthia Kupper, CRD, CDE (Executive Director of the Gluten Intolerance Group and celiac).

However, let's suppose the Tabasco sauce, as mentioned in the recent post, really does measure 160 ppm (parts per million), and the source of the gluten in the Tabasco really is the distilled wheat vinegar. Is this a large enough amount to cause a reaction? I don't know. It depends. If the product in question is Tabasco sauce, I may use only a few drops. But if the product containing 160ppm is vodka, and I go on my vacation and decide to drink hard lemonade on the beach all week, I might get really sick. And not just from all that vodka.

So, in summary, I still have no personal answer. The responses are listed in my next post - part two:
Janice.

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