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I am late in arriving on the board with a summary of Spanish coffee
and canker sores, but here it is.  Just recently I found I was also
getting canker sores with Italian coffee, and my wife suggested it
might be the strength of the coffee or the water being used to make
the coffee that is responsible for the sores.  I'm going to post a
note on that under the title, "Coffee and canker sores".

Many thanks to all respondents,

Tom Fitzsimmons.

The original posting is dated October 23, 2003, and reads like this:
"A son and daughter returned recently from a trip to Spain and
brought back lots of Spanish coffee.  I tried some, and started
getting canker sores again after being free from them since going off
gluten 3 years ago.

The coffee is ground coffee, and the info printed on the packages is
this: Cafe molido de tueste natural.  (I think this means something
like natural flavor ground coffee), and the are two different types
of coffee: one is "Espresso" and the other is "Moka", both produced
by Carrefour Centros Comerciales, S.A.

I think Carrefour is a conglomerate and coffee is only one of its
products.  They have an Internet site at www.carrefour.es, but I
didn't find coffee in my limited surf of the site.

Has anyone else had this kind of reaction to coffee after years of
being free of canker sores and during those years being an
enthusiastic and daily drinker of quarts of coffee?  I am suspicious
that these Spanish coffees may be adulterated with ground wheat flour
which I know causes me to get canker sores."

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"Torrefacto is produced by a special roasting process that results in
a remarkably robust, full-bodied cup of coffee, without a hint of
bitterness.  A portion of the raw coffee beans are coated with a fine
mist of sugar before they are poured in the roaster with the other
quality beans.  Every café and restaurant in Spain uses this type of
specially roasted torrefacto coffee."

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"Moka could be the problem. It would have chocolate added, which may
not be GF. Expresso should be fine... .."

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"WATCH out for natural flavoring as it can have gluten."

***********************

"Molido means ground, tueste means roasted.

'Coffee adulterated with wheat flour' is an old wives' tale that has
been passed around this list for years. It's a damned lie. No one has
ever come up with a single shred of evidence to support it. Cheapie
coffee brands may use the outer hulls of the coffee cherry (thrown
out by the better brands) as filler, and it's free. No one is going
to pay for wheat, which is relatively expensive and doesn't look or
feel like coffee anyway, when the coffee hulls are there for free.

Still, the coffee you used could have added flavoring_if_Spain does
not require it to be shown on the label. And if so, who knows what it
might contain. But you would have to know Spanish or EU labeling
regulations. In the US, any ingredient in coffee must be shown on the
label.

FWIW, my older son, who is not a celiac, could not tolerate German or
Spanish coffee when he was stationed in Europe. It would give him
severe indigestion."

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"Coffee often seems to have gluten in it. I only buy Starbucks and
Gevalia coffees because it was said on this list that they both are
gluten free and because I don't have reactions to them. Folgers was
one that was mentioned to be GF also. I only buy the Whole Foods
brand coffee filters because one can't be sure what is in the
filters, either. I had quit drinking coffee for years because it gave
me reactions and I was glad to find out that there are some that
don't."

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"I am one that will get canker sores from acid in foods. That is, if
I eat to many foods with acid, my mouth will break out with these
sores. This happens when I have to much coffee and also tomatoes. In
other words, I do not do well if I over eat at any one time, foods
with a high acid content. (Coffee, tomatoes, pineapples, citrus,
etc.) My personal feeling is that it is the acid and nothing to do
with wheat, rye, or barley (gluten) in my case."

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* Please remember some posters may be WHEAT-FREE, but not GLUTEN-FREE *