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Once, pasta and bread were store cupboard staples. Now, many of us are replacing them with ‘healthier’ gluten-free foods. But are they really better for us? ... The new ubiquity of gluten-free products certainly makes life much easier for sufferers of coeliac disease, an auto-immune response to wheat where the body believes wrongly that gluten is attacking it... But coeliacs make up only one in 100 of the population ... Nutritionist Ian Marber agrees that yeast, not gluten, may be the real culprit... Marber acknowledges that gluten intolerance does exist, but probably in fewer cases than is generally believed. ......

Swiss researchers have discovered a way to stabilise enzymes in the digestive tract by linking polymers to the enzymes. It offers a route for developing protein-based drugs that can be administered orally without rapidly degrading, and could provide new therapeutic strategies for conditions involving abnormal enzyme activity such as coeliac disease.Modifying enzymes with polymers for pharmaceuticals is nothing new and has been done for years to prolong their lifetime in the body and dampen any immune response. But protein-based drugs are typically injected or administered in a way that bypasses the gastrointestinal tract. The protecting effect of the polymer may...

A wide range of gluten free cereals have been studies in detail as part of the HEALTHGRAIN project of the European Union, and their impact on product quality has been assessed. Enzyme technology, bioprocessing as well as high-pressure processing technology have been successfully applied to improve the quality, safety and nutritional attributes of gluten free cereal products. In genetically susceptible individuals, the ingestion of gluten and related proteins triggers an immunemediated enteropathy known as Coeliac Disease (CD). Recent epidemiological studies have shown that 1 in 100 people worldwide suffer from CD. Such a rate establishes CD as one of the...