Not only an essential everyday necessity, but a quintessential food item to every type of event, freshly baked bread makes a big difference to our meals, whether we’re talking sandwiches, burgers, or full course dinners.
But bread nowadays is divided.
On one hand, we have regular bread, which includes over 100 varieties of bread found all around the world.
On the other hand, we have gluten-free bread, which is made without gluten. Gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye, hence gluten-free bread is wheat-free, barley-free and rye-free.
Gluten-free bread is also baked in a variety of styles.
Bread without gluten – a necessity of the modern world
The necessity to produce gluten free bread became apparent in more recent years when a large number of people started developing gluten intolerance or what is now known as the celiac disease.
- If in the second half of the 1990s 1 in 2,500 people worldwide suffered from gluten intolerance, 1 in 130 started to be diagnosed with the disease less than a decade later.
- It is estimated that in the United States 1 in 133 Americans has celiac disease today, meaning around one percent of the population.
The celiac disease manifests itself as an immune reaction to gluten intake, and the effects of eating gluten when gluten intolerant include fatigue, diarrhea, anemia, bloating, and weight loss with the potential of more serious complications arising if the damage is inflicted continuously.
With so many people manifesting these symptoms, the alternative to regular bread became obvious, so producers developed gluten-free bread.
Gluten free bread is baked without gluten. There are also many other gluten-free items on the market today. These include bagels, soups, stews, croutons, beer, spaghetti and so much more.
The mystery but not so much a mystery of people developing allergic reactions to gluten
One of the most ingested proteins, gluten in the form of wheat has been consumed on earth for thousands of years. Since it remains one of the most heavily consumed grains, it is also one of the most heavily produced.
Therefore, to meet demand and be able to produce as much as possible in as little time and on as little acreage as possible, the industry has developed through GMO technology hybridized wheat that is nutritionally lower compared to wheat thousands and even centuries ago.
Experimenting with plant genetics and introducing chemicals to wheat, the industry has changed a lot of the typical characteristics in wheat, not to mention some changes also occurred naturally along the course of time since wheat first spread through the world.
For a long time, wheat was only available to a small number of people, so this could explain why there aren’t any reported cases of gluten intolerance in the distant past.
As wheat spread and became a staple in the American diet, so did the celiac disease. However, researchers agree that modern wheat composition resulting from cross-breeding and industrialized processes in recent years may have contributed a lot more to the negative impact of gluten today than any natural transformation.