What is Gluten? Gluten is a combination of two substances, gliadin and glutenin, and is produced in some grasses. Wheat, Barley and Rye are all types of grass and most of us have been raised to eat the products of these grasses, namely flour and flour-based foods such as bread and cakes.
Gluten is also used as a stabilizing agent in many other foods, and you will often see it as one of the ingredients in canned or bottled food, but is sometimes listed as "Amp Isostearoyl Hydolized Wheat Protein". Because you know what to look for on food labels, you'd think that you can easily avoid it, however, many foods contain small amounts of gluten, and according to many countries food laws, if the amount is under a certain percentage, the food manufacturers don't have to list it.
This means that you have to start learning what foods have gluten in naturally. Lots of very healthy foods don't contain gluten such as quinoa, oats, soybeans, sunflower seeds and millet. Other grasses such as buckwheat, corn and rice don't have any in them naturally.
Some people simply cannot eat gluten and have developed celiac disease, whereby their bodies cannot digest gluten. They often suffer a multitude of symptoms including, painful abdominal bloating, chronic diarrhea or the opposite, constipation, and sometimes even migraine headaches. They may also have to endure chronic fatigue, joint pain, numbness in fingers and toes, depression or anxiety and some people seem to develop osteoporosis at a very young age.
A way of eating known as the Paleolithic diet (often referred to as simply "the Paleo Diet") has been suggested as an excellent way to eat. The Paleo Diet works because of the assumption that humans have evolved over many years to eat certain types of food. As Humming birds have evolved to eat nectar from flowers and Eagles have evolved to eat meat from prey, so too have humans evolved to eat food that they have either hunted (meat) or gathered (berries, roots etc.).
As the agricultural revolution began a few thousand years ago in response to increasingly large populations around the world, people began to develop farming techniques that would make it possible to feed all of these hundreds of thousands of humans. Though many foods can keep us alive, such as sugar and alcohol, it isn't necessarily healthy for us, and consuming too much of the wrong foods can and does cause many harmful, and sometimes fatal, effects.
For example, many North American Indian tribes suffer from diabetes to a degree that is three or four times what is currently considered the norm. Perhaps this is due to their relatively new introduction to the foods considered normal by some western civilizations?
The worldwide increase in allergies and food intolerances could possibly also be attributed to diet. The fact is, we don't know if our Paleolithic ancestors suffered from these things the way that we do today, but we do have a very good idea what they ate, based on where they lived, what they had access to and the tools that they used (spears, bows and arrows etc.)
They ate quite differently from the things that we take for granted as normal. Perhaps it would make sense for all of us to try to eat the way our recent ancestors did, or at least to try it and see what health benefits might be easily available to us?
If you were to try this type of diet, maybe you'll find that your migraines would ease-up or disappear completely. Perhaps you'll lose some of that weight you've been promising yourself you'll shed for years? How about that ongoing fatigue that seems to get the better of you every day? You may simply get much nicer skin, acne free and smooth as the day you were born? Perhaps you'll get ALL of these benefits?
I'm certainly not suggesting that you go out and start hunting for your meat, though many expert nutritionists would suggest that you DO eat more fish. Hey, fishing is a KIND of hunting isn't it?
Okay, for everyday meals, you can't be expected to go out and hunt or gather food such as berries and roots, and even if you could, turning these ingredients into a healthy meal isn't something that would come naturally to you. But then cooking ANYTHING may not come naturally to you either; I certainly have to use a recipe book whenever I cook anything more complicated than a grilled-cheese sandwich!
There are plenty of gluten-free recipes available nowadays, as more and more people are trying this gluten-free diet. Many people are reporting substantially improved health and feelings of well-being; perhaps it's time YOU gave it a try?
