Oats

[Sensible Celiac]

I realize I may be just stirring the pot here, perhaps the oatmeal pot in this case, but I find that I am able to eat any old brand of oatmeal without perceiving any ill effects.

I'm well aware that there have been analyses of commercial oatmeal products that have detected varying degrees of contamination with wheat, but in my personal experience it does not seem that any cross contamination that may be found in Quaker Oats or generic supermarket brand tear open instant oatmeal packets is enough to trigger the undesirable reaction in me.

It is also well known and established scientifically that some people with celiac disease, perhaps about 20% of us, will react just as with gluten to even 100% pure oats.

My personal belief, that I can not document or prove, is that this fact that 20% of people with celiac disease react even to pure oats is largely responsible for the great concerns about contamination of commercial grade oats products. I suspect that most people who are among the majority of celiac sufferers that do not react to pure oats would be able to tolerate most brands of oats on the market today.

Of course it is good to minimize our exposure to gluten in every possible way, and I'm not suggesting people should be careless, but on the other hand if the minute traces of wheat in generic oat products actually are of no medical significance then it is not necessary to pay through the nose for the GF label.

Your mileage may vary.

[Lizbuppers]

I was wondering how it is that any of you have been able to get the GF oats from Bob's Red Mill. If you go to their site they are not listed, and several months ago I contacted them and was told that they were unavailable and would be for only 6 weeks. Of course, that was many, many moons ago. I even contacted my local health food store that buys items from them in bulk and they said they can't get them either. Are they just shipping to certain parts of the country, or did you get them before they got yanked?

[janessal]

I got my Bob's Red Mill oats recently at a local health store (Long Beach CA) and saw them at Whole Foods last weekend

[Lizbuppers]

Well that's annoying, since the only word we can get here in the Northeast is that they are "unavailable." They should just be open about it if they are only going to sell them regionally.

[Valerie]

Originally Posted by Sensible Celiac

I realize I may be just stirring the pot here, perhaps the oatmeal pot in this case, but I find that I am able to eat any old brand of oatmeal without perceiving any ill effects.

Your mileage may vary.

You are a brave man to have tried this. May I ask what prompted you to try? I have still not tried the gf oats because my reactions are so bad, systemic, and last for so long that it just can't be worth it.

[Sensible Celiac]

Originally Posted by Valerie

You are a brave man to have tried this. May I ask what prompted you to try?

I ran out of Trader Joe's Banana Toaster Waffles, so it was an emergency. I wanted breakfast, and there was the oatmeal in the pantry. It's in my nature not to blindly accept what everyone says without seeing evidence, and when I examined the evidence on the issue of oats for people with celiac disease I concluded that the odds were greatest that it would not bother me.

My daughter, a registered nurse, also has celiac disease and she is also able to tolerate randomly selected products containing oats.

It is a fact though that there are people with celiac disease who definitely, positively do react even to 100% pure oats. This has been observed taking blood samples from celiacs and mixing in a little avenin - the offending protein in oats. Scientists have seen an in vitro autoimmune reaction, so this evidence is absolute and definite.

It has also been observed that the mucosal lining of the small intestine becomes inflamed, as is the case in a gluten reaction, when a minority of people with celiac disease eat pure uncontaminated oats.

In my own case I get a very pleasant sensation in my gut after eating oats, the kind of reaction your body produces when it likes what you are eating. I call this happy tummy.

I don't eat oats every day, maybe once or twice a month. But it is great to be able to take a packet of oatmeal on a trip as a backup breakfast strategy.

My hypothesis is that many people who simply can not eat oats at all try some oats that are not claimed to be gluten free by the manufacturer, have a reaction to the avenin proteins in the oats, then reach the possibly false conclusion that the oats they ate were contaminated with wheat.

I believe the widespread anxiety in the celiac community about cross contamination of oats with wheat is at least partly because of situations like this.

I know that it is true that random samples of oats can often be found to contain minute traces of wheat, this is a fact. But for those persons with celiac disease who do not also react to avenin I wonder if the degree of contamination is very often of a significant quantity to provoke a gluten reaction.

Besides, I'm going to die some day anyway, everyone does, so I just figure to heck with worrying and I go for it.

PS oatmeal with blackstrap molasses kicks butt!

[adjustmentsforlife]

Oats are the best food and gives the more energy and also by taking this there is no side effects or any thing else more over oats are well nutritionized food.