<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> Caramel coloring: When sugar is heated for a while, it will turn black and into 'coal'. Before it reaches the 'coal' stage, the sugar melts and becomes brown. That brown stuff is called 'caramel', and can be used as a flavour or as a dye for food. So theoretically, caramel coloring is gluten free, but I also have to add that I am not familiar with food additives in the US (as I have European roots). However, somebody reported that Coke is gluten free, and to my knowledge, Coke contains caramel coloring too. Alzheimer (and gluten): Although there is a lot more research going on on Alzheimer than on Coeliac, one does not really know what causes Alzheimer, or those amyloid plaques that are found in Alzheimer patient's brains. From what I recall from a recent meeting session on protein folding, one theory is that some proteins undergo an aberrant folding pathway forming insoluble and unfunctional proteins instead of the native one. Why this happens is under investigation... As a nonceliac scientist I would say that CD and Alzheimer's disease are not directely related. Of course, any celiac patient has a certain risk to catch something, just like anybody else. Moreover, one inherits markers that have nothing to do with each other, eg tendency to develop hayfever and body size. Marianne ([log in to unmask])