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;
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.
As noted previously on our site, and on other blogs, a number of products sold at Great Specialty Products [dot] com having a gluten free product claim contained measurable amounts of gluten. Our initial post showed five products to have gluten, an additional four tests have also shown high levels of gluten in three other products. We know of no tests which have shown a gluten free product (using 20 ppm as the definition of gluten free). Tests using both the R5 and Skerrit antibody have been used. The lone test used capable of showing very high levels of gluten indicated the levels were similar to that of regular bread (>5,000 ppm of gluten).
We are providing this information due to the number of inquiries we have had since our initial post. Any investigations being pursued are the domain of the appropriate authorities and we make no comment about those efforts.
If you have purchased these products and they have affected your health, please contact the relevant state agency. Despite the regulatory and labeling constraints around gluten, we are fortunate to have state agencies which are very quick to act when someone says, “I ate this and it made me or my child sick.” Please contact only the relevant group, while we appreciate the efforts of those who are disturbed by the implications of this information, our efforts are focused on providing factual information to the appropriate parties.
Washington, DC: We have received inquiries from Washington DC, however we have been unable to identify the appropriate regulatory body to approach. If you know of the appropriate group, please let us know at contact@junonutrition.com so we can update this link.
If you have samples of the product please keep them in a refrigerated environment and pass that information on as you call the parties mentioned above. Other records which indicate the date or purchase, any labeling that was provided should be retained and shared with the appropriate authorities. To date we know of no attempts by the manufacturer to issue a recall or alert previous customers.
These products were available by purchase in person, by delivery and via the mail service. The website appears to still be functioning (we are not linking to it). Their first efforts to sell products can be dated to October 1, 2009.
Thanks to everyone who stopped by our table top yesterday at the Gluten Free vendor exhibits at the Earth Fare in Raleigh.
The quick summary was:
32 National chain locations with a GF menu identified.
6 Well known grocers
11 Local restaurants that are known to be GF friendly or have a GF menu.
We’ll be putting up the full materials later this week, but wanted to be sure to share the snapshot of the map right away. We loved the feedback and camaraderie it generated.
The Gluten Free Gourmet was one of our first and favorite GF authors
We’ve been looking at the comments about The GFree Diet: A Gluten-Free Survival Guide by Ms. Elizabeth Hasselbeck and allegations of plagiarism. We’re not lawyers, but at first glance it doesn’t appear as if the charges have much merit. Looking at that case, it made us think of the books that we’ve included in our own library.
1. Wheat Free Worry Free by Ms. Danna Korn. This was my first book post diagnosis, I found it very helpful.
2. Let’s Eat Out! – The Allergy Free Passport. We purchased a general guidebook and two specific cuisine guides for Chinese Indian and Thai, as well as American Steak & Seafood and Mexican Cuisine Passport. We found the big book helpful, the smaller books less so. The smaller books were full of individual meal warnings that a product may have been cross contaminated or the recipe may have ingredient risk. This series has been well-recognized and it is clear that author Kim Koeller is committed to the franchise.
3. We’ve mentioned Triumph Dining in the past and think that is far as guidebooks go that drill down to specific locations, they are one of the best. Our library includes the 2nd Edition of their Grocery Guide as well as the 2nd and 4th editions of their Restaurant Guide.
4. One of our original favorite books was by Bette Hagman, The Gluten-Free Gourmet Cooks Fast and Healthy, who passed away several years ago. She was a longtime supporter of the Gluten Intolerance Group.
5. Gluten-Free Diet by Ms. Shelley Case was a gift that came at just the right point. It was maybe a year into the diagnosis when gluten-fatigue was beginning to way on us. For a great article talking about Celiac disease and the NYC blackout of August 2003, check out this article at Celiac.com.
6. We’d also picked up 125 Best Gluten-Free Recipes, which was an easy purchase given the delicious looking chocolate cake on the cover.
7. It may not be gluten-focused, but we’re also going to include Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution. It was while on a weight-loss driven diet that I noticed my dermal issues were going away. I would find out a few years later that I had DH, which regardless of your view of Dr. Atkins’ diet, will always make him smile from our view.
Are there any other GF books out there that you love? If so, please share them with us.
How often in the next year are you going to get sick through accidental gluten ingestion? What is it worth it to you to cut that number in half? What if we cut it to a tenth? What if instead of thinking in terms of accidental ingestions per year, it was per decade? Gluten is out there, it is going to find you. Vigilance is key, and part of our service to our customers is to provide you with the best statistical information possible about what products and locations you should avoid to increase the probability that you stay healthy.
There are lots of people like you. They are diligent about how they talk to restaurants, they call food manufacturers before eating packaged goods and when in doubt they will purchase an over-the-counter food test to make a final arbitration about the gluten status of a product. I personally kept a database that served as a precursor to our current product. The value of what we do at Juno Nutrition is that we allow the gluten free community to aggregate that data. If a location doesn’t give consistent responses about what is gluten free, then that is interesting information to have. If a gluten test gives a different indication about whether or not a product is GF than the food labeling, then that is important information to share.
Juno Nutrition is more than that – we are the advanced troops to helping restaurants understand what GF products are available. When they see that other restaurants are able to be GF with the same menu items, we move from debating whether or not a recipe can be created to knowing it is possible. We want a world where it is easy to avoid gluten and easy to find GF foods; Every day our entire team focuses on making that dream a reality.
The food industry is a wonderful thing. Having had the opportunity to work in and study many different industries, it is always the more mature, more entrenched industries that maintain a staggering diversity of supply chain components and businesses. Food is an old, old business.
It all starts at the farm. Crops are grown, animals are raised. After harvest, those components are created into ingredients. Some are primary ingredients; some are broken down and reformulated into flavorings and scents. These components are augmented by additives and preservatives and then either made into packaged goods to be sold at grocers or into materials sold to the restaurant industry. Every part of this supply chain has numerous players, numerous inputs and varying degrees of knowledge about their inputs and end products.
This is an amazingly complex system that comes together each day to keep all six billion of us fed. There are many points where gluten can be introduced into the supply chain, numerous ways of testing to ensure that the product does not have gluten and in the middle of this difficulty we’ve got to acknowledge that the gluten free population is amazingly tiny when compared to the six billion. That being said, there is hope and help. Food manufacturers understand this issue and as nutrition-addressable healthcare issues continue to arise, the need for accuracy and source-ability in their products continues to increase.
This isn’t an issue that can be resolved overnight, but with the right quantitative approach and long term view, it is an addressable issue.
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