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By Fred, February 9, 2010 8:00 am

On February 5, 2010, the NY Times ran a piece outlining thoughts at the FDA of re-evaluating the portion sizes found on food labels.

For those of us who follow a specialty diet; the issues with food labels are no surprise.  While we are all hunting through to understand what items may indicate wheat, gluten, shellfish, peanuts, tree-nuts, dairy or soy, most of us have learned to ignore the seemingly random aspect of portion size.  One bag of chips may be 2 servings, another 1, another may be fractional.  Bags from within a product family may have different portion sizes by weight and not be internally consistent.

One other item that is near and dear to those of us who await any gluten-labeling guidelines is that the FDA is no better at dealing with this issue than any other.  The article states midway through, that;

The F.D.A. has vowed to re-evaluate serving sizes before. Amid concern over obesity, it said in 2005 that it was considering changes. That effort languished, but has now been revived by the Obama administration.

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By Fred, February 8, 2010 10:00 am

We’ve talked in the past about our love of TED and how many of its big picture talks can help us frame new ways of thinking about the gluten free diet (”GFD”) and Celiac Disease (”CD”). In the video below, Bill Davenhal discusses the impact that geography has over health.

Davenhall walks through his own live, having lived in several “red zones” for health; he grew up in PA, lived in Louisville, KY, which he proclaims as “Rubbertown”, and then moved to smoggy Los Angeles.

His approach to geomedicine, as he terms it, is broad and long term. Having lived years in these places, he claims, that his physicians;

Never asked about the water put in my mouth or the food that I ingest in my stomach.

For CD, the implications might be more profound with a more tactical approach to data.  If every restaurant someone with CD visited in the past month had poor options for those on the GFD, then the probability of gluten ingestion is higher than for those who made different choices.  Davenhall makes a brief case using big time periods; the impact appears as if it might be more profound if smaller periods of time and a more detailed focus on location were made.  Think restaurants, not states and the impact on CD becomes more profound.

Davenhall closes with a quote from respected physician Jack Lord;

Geography is destiny in medicine.

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By Fred, February 2, 2010 10:46 pm

Photos of the defendant, Seelig / Gleason, as the injunction stopping him from selling Gluten Free products and ordering his website be taken down. Photo taken by WRAL, property of Capitol Broadcasting Company.

A preliminary injunction was granted in the case of North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Plaintiff v. Paul Evan Seelig a/k/a Andrew Jeffrey “Jeff” Gleason d/b/a Great Specialty Products, defendant.

Excerpts below:

29. The Defendant has committed much of his adult life to defrauding and victimizing people, most recently endangering their health and safety;

30. The Defendant is not engaged in an honest business enterprise, but rather, is engaged in a scheme to defraud particularly vulnerable, sick people;

32. The North Carolina Department of Agriculture brings this lawsuit on behalf of the people of this State who have been or soon may be victimized by the Defendant’s illegal conduct;

33. These people, especially those with Celiac Disease and Gluten intolerance, are particularly vulnerable to injury and harm by reason of the Defendant’s business activities;

Summary of the findings - the Defendant is ordered to accomplish the following within one day;
1. Provide a list of all of his ingredient, product and bread suppliers.
2. Share a customer list (presumably so they can be notified of the issues with the bread products).
3. Provide samples of all of the products to the State.
4. Permit the State to inspect all facilities.
5. Take down his website and all advertising.

Further, the defendant must include, in all capitals and in bold print, “THIS PRODUCT(S) IS NOT GLUTEN FREE.”

Bail was set at $100,000 as the court considered Seelig / Gleason a flight risk.

GlutenFreeRaleigh coverage from the courtroom is here.

NBC 17, Raleigh News coverage here.

WRAL coverage of the story is here.

A copy of the original court filing against Seelig / Gleason and Great Specialty Products is here.

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By Fred, January 28, 2010 5:38 pm

TED is a nonprofit that puts together conferences where the speakers talk about bold, challenging ideas.  At the July 2009 event, they invited Ms. Carolyn Steel, author of Hungry City, to talk about how food shapes modern cities.  It’s a fascinating presentation in which she walks through the history of modern cities, with a focus on London, and outlines how food has impacted the shape, size, and distribution of mankind.

Ms. Steel introduces the concept of a Sitopia, or “food place” - borrowing from Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, or “ideal place”, from his 16th century book.  The sitopia she describes is a place where people live in concert with, and in full knowledge of the source and impact of their food.  It flows well with the concepts of Michael Pollan, for those who have read his books as well.

She states,

[You] Can’t have it without people who think about food, who plan ahead.  We need these people, they are part of a network.  Without these kind of people we can’t have places like this [the sitopia].

Could that be what we, people who have CD, or who pursue the GFD, are?  Like it or not, we think about food a lot.  Much more than the average individual.  And we are certainly part of a network - both our own networks as we share information on food, and as part of the non-GFD communities in which we participate every day.  All our colleagues know that we are food sensitive.  We are the de facto food experts in any gathering.

Sitopia already exists in little pockets everywhere.  The trick is to join them up.

We couldn’t agree more.

We can use food as a really powerful tool to make the world better.

Thanks again, Ms. Steel - these are the kind of bold, challenging, ideas, that we like to hear.

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By Fred, January 24, 2010 4:17 pm

Ms. Blum's Book - The Poisoner's Handbook

Ms. Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoner’s Handbook; Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, penned a guest column in the Wall Street Journal this weekend.  It makes for a fascinating read, not only because of the historical implications, but also because of the science involved.

The history of poisoning is the story of an arms race between those developing poisons and those who wish to be able to determine if someone has, in fact, been poisoned.  It is painful to be on the wrong side of this arms race.

With determination, researchers do learn how to get ahead of threats and win their turn in the game. In the 19th century, for instance, after murderers turned to plant poisons, scientists redoubled their efforts to capture those alkaloids in human tissue. And in 1860, a single-minded French chemist named Jean Servais Stas figured out how to isolate nicotine, an alkaloid of the tobacco plant, from a corpse. Other plant poisons soon became more accessible, and chemists were able to offer new assistance to criminal investigations.

We’ve recently been going through many of the scientific and medical papers written in the late 1990s and early 2000s that determined safe levels of gluten, the impact of different fractions of gliadin and glutenin and the challenges of testing for gluten in food.  The similarity in the language between these papers and Ms. Blum’s is uncanny.

The arms race is between our ability to identify the components of gluten and then to understand which of those components have a negative impact on those of us with Celiac disease.  Just as Ms. Blum’s text outlines the dramatic drop in homicidal poisonings, we can look to see that the same scientific method should dramatically reduce the impact of gluten on the CD population.

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By Fred, January 21, 2010 10:16 pm

Find Zach Becker at Gluten Free Raleigh’s coverage of today’s hearing against Great Specialty Products [dot] com here.

NBC News 17 in Raleigh covered the story as well.

Here is a longer article by the Raleigh News and Observer from this morning, published after the State Attorney General’s office made their initial filings public.  We appreciate the reference.

And again, note our original post on GSP’s products, our subsequent post, and this post at the GFCF Cookbook.

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By Fred, January 20, 2010 10:57 pm

The North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Safety takes an unprecedented step in the legal defense of those with Celiac Disease.

Pursuant to past posts here, and at the GFCF Cookbook, about Great Specialty Products [dot] com.

This action is being brought to stop the dissemination of false and misleading advertising previously made and now being made by Defendant Paul Evan Seelig, alk/a Andrew Jeffrey “Jeff” Gleason, d/b/a Great Specialty Products (hereinafter collectively referred to as “Defendant Seelig” or individually referred to as “Gleason” or “Great Specialty Products”), using, inter alia, the internet website www.greatspecialtyproducts.com (hereinafter referred to as the “Great Specialty Products’ website”) and via telecommunications. Said advertisements falsely and misleadingly state and misrepresent that certain bread products sold by Defendant Seelig via the Great Specialty Products’ website are and were gluten-free when, in fact, said bread products contain gluten that causes harmful physical reactions and other serious health-related problems when consumed by people who have, inter alia, Celiac Disease.

This is taken from the first page of File No. 10CV001020 issued on Wednesday, January 20 at 3 PM against Paul Seelig, the Plaintiff, by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

We will link to the full document as it becomes available.

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By Fred, January 13, 2010 9:29 am

USA Today ran an article on the social impact of specialty diets

Of the people we’ve dealt with who are newly diagnosed with CD, or who have been told to conform to the GFD for medical reasons in the past month 6% said that they were not going to because, “it was too difficult and disruptive.”  Our sample size is small, but that felt like a high number, and if anything we suspect it may be higher than 6%; few are bold enough to proclaim they are going against medical advice (”AMA”).

While the findings of the USA today article aren’t a surprise for anyone on the GFD or who is close to someone who is, it highlights one of the real challenges.  The diet is difficult for many reasons.  Finding strategies that improve diet conformance for whatever reason, improves patient quality of life.  While the article itself states nothing new to those who are on a specialty diet, educating the population at large about the challenges and stigma that can surround a specialty diet is valuable and we hope there are many more similar articles.

We should note this correction in their article:

Kendra, 31, breaks out in hives and can have swallowing and breathing difficulties if she eats gluten, a protein found in wheat, oat [Gluten is not in oats, although it is one of several challenging food-science issues of the GFD], barley and rye.

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By Fred, January 11, 2010 10:41 pm

Would you like a gluten-shaker? Answer = No.

No, we don’t want a gluten shaker on your table.  That would be a bad, unused, item.  However, in reading two articles today from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal on efforts to curb the use of salt in foods, we see a template that could be applied to the food industry’s use of gluten.

Per Ilan Brat and Maurice Tamman’s well-researched article, “Food Makers Quietly Cut Back on Salt: Companies Find Consumers Respond Better When Sodium-Reduction Isn’t Emphasized on Labels”, “Salt is an inexpensive ingredient that enhances sweetness and diminishes bitterness in flavors. It keeps packaged foods fresh longer, plumps up canned vegetables and helps hold together hot dogs.” For anyone with CD or who pursues the GFD, these words sound familiar. Salt is an inexpensive ingredient, like gluten. Salt enhances the product, in the same way gluten enhances the chewiness and texture of foods. Salt is important in extending shelf-life, and we are all well familiar with the challenges of keeping GF food products edible without the assistance of refrigeration.

Salt is a mineral.  Gluten is plant derived.  Salt has merited its own book and has arguably driven the course of world history. Grains, the wheat, rye and barley, which produce gluten, made the fertile crescent and agriculture changed humanity’s course.

The articles make great points; (i) consumers expect low-salt products to taste worse, but are okay with it if phased in, (ii) general health improves by reducing salt to minimal levels, (iii) everyone wins with salt added only where necessary, (iv) there is increasing awareness at the policy level about the negative impacts of too much salt being used for the general population.

For the gluten-avoidance community to catch up with the salt-avoidance community we need better quantification of the negative impacts of gluten.  We see the beginnings of that for those with CD in insurance-related studies, but we will benefit from other studies of other specialty diet populations.

In closing, we highlight an excerpt from the WSJ article with salt modified to [gluten] - think about what it would mean:

Consumers’ prejudices about reduced-salt [gluten] products and taste are also complicating food-makers’ efforts.

In one 2007 test in Holland, Unilever found that consumers expected to like one powdered-soup mix purported to be lower in salt [gluten] less than another, even though they were actually identical, says Mr. Balentine, of Unilever.

“Once you start saying you’ve taken salt down [gluten out], it’s basically equal to, ‘It’s not going to taste good,”‘ he says.

New technology is driving many salt [gluten] reductions by helping maintain the saltiness [texture] of products with less sodium [no gluten]. Some companies are deploying new meaty-tasting compounds that boost saltiness flavor without sodium [gluten] or cooling agents that make the tongue taste salt [texture] better. Others are using materials that smell salty [have the same texture] without having any sodium [gluten], says Mr. Eilerman, of Givaudan.

It makes for a nice read, doesn’t it?

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By Fred, January 5, 2010 7:45 am

What would be the impact of eating these items?

Spectrums are everywhere, from the classic visible light spectrum of ROY G BIV (or his Russian cousin, VIB G YOR), to the progression from birth to death, gradual changes and their delineations provide useful frameworks for understanding how things work.

There is an obvious spectrum of the impact consuming an item could have on an individual.  On one side we have severe negative reactions, and on the other, we have extremely positive reactions.  In the middle we have neutral events.  Our focus here is on the impact on an individual, not on an entire population.  The spectrum has five clear values:

• Strong Negative: If the item ingested kills the individual, it is a poison.
• Weak Negative: If the item harms the individual, it is a toxin or allergen.
• Neutral: If the item has no impact, it is a non-actor.
• Weak Positive: If the item sustains the individual, then it is a food.
• Strong Positive: If the item improves the individual, it is a medicine.

From a severity standpoint, gluten is somewhere between the weak and strong negative for those with CD.  For those with some kind of wheat anaphylaxis, it is clearly a poison.  For the population at large, it is somewhere between neutral and weak positive.  While this framework for thinking about gluten is focused on individuals, it is a first step in exploring the impact of gluten on a population.