Re: corn vs corn gluten

[Guest guest]

This is from www.celiac.com

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Gluten vs. Corn Protein Information

Although corn is considered safe for celiacs, many still have

problems digesting it.

The term gluten in reference to the cohesive, elastic protein mass

remaining after starch is washed from a dough goes back to Beccari in

1745. Strictly speaking, gluten is found only in wheat because it is

difficult to wash a cohesive protein mass even from rye, the closest

relative to wheat, let alone from barley or oats or anything else.

Unfortunately, a misuse of the term by the corn industry has become

common in recent years. It has become fairly common to call corn

storage proteins " corn gluten. " Personally, I think there is no

justification for such usage. Corn may contain prolamins, as does

wheat, but not gluten.

When it comes to celiac disease, a similar corruption of the term has

become very common. There are certain related proteins in wheat, rye,

and barley that give rise to particular peptides during digestion

that are capable of triggering the responses typical of celiac

disease. Only in the case of wheat can these be strictly considered

to be derived from the gluten proteins. But for lack of a suitable

term, patients and their physicians began speaking of gluten-free or

gluten-containing foods. People ask me, " How much gluten is there in

quinoa? " I have to translate this into, " Are there any harmful

peptide sequences in the proteins of quinoa? " There is nothing in

quinoa that is like gluten prepared from a wheat flour dough, which

has an unusual, perhaps unique, viscoelastic character.

In any case, as far as we know, corn does not seem to cause harm to

celiac patients. Corn has not been studied in the extensive way that

wheat has in relation to celiac disease, but for 40+ years patients

and their physicians have seemed to agree that corn is OK. The

sequences in the corn zein (prolamin) fraction are suspicious, but

they do differ in an apparently crucial way from the protein

sequences of the wheat gliadin (prolamin) fraction. There have been

no modern biopsy-based studies of the effects of purified corn

proteins on the celiac intestine as there have been for wheat, but

the mass of evidence still seems to point in the direction of corn

being safe for celiac patients.

> Can anyone tell me what the difference between corn and corn gluten

is? On

> the IgG test, my son shows up with a low allergy to corn, but has no

> sensitivities to corn gluten.

>

> in Idaho