| Not
long ago, the gluten-free diet consisted of "no wheat, rye,
barley or oats". Currently you will often see recommendations
of "no wheat, rye or barley". So are oats now safe for
the gluten-free diet? The answer is: some oats are safe for some
people. This is a gray area, and those who are newly-diagnosed need
more information to help prevent continued illness.
The
first problem with oats was that there were no oats available that
were free from cross-contamination. That problem is now solved,
and specially-grown oats are available from several companies, some
of which are listed below. Note that the oats currently used to
make commercial breakfast cereals, such as Quaker Oats and Cheerios,
are not specially grown,
and are not gluten-free.
The
second problem with oats is that, although a number of studies have
concluded that they are safe in the GF diet, other research has
shown that some people with CD do, in fact, react to oats.
Current
recommendations reveal that no one should try oats unless and until
they are doing well on the GF diet and all
of their symptoms have disappeared. When consuming oats,
if symptoms reappear then the oats should be discontinued. It would
be possible to have a reaction to oats with no symptoms, and the
blood tests may not be sensitive enough to detect this. For more
information, read these statements, which include numerous cautions:
Beth
Israel Deaconness Celiac Disease Center Recommendations on Oat Consumption
Consumption
of pure oats by individuals with celiac disease: A position statement
by the Canadian Celiac Association
Inerestingly,
some
varieties of oats have recently been found to be more toxic than
others, although all varieties tested (1,
2,
3)
caused some type of reaction. This variation in the level of toxicity
may account for some of the inconsistency in study results.
Oats
that have been specially-grown and processed to be gluten-free are
available from these companies:
Gifts of Nature
Certified by GFCO to
contain less than 10 ppm gluten
GlutenFreeOats
An informative website; well worth reading
Certified by GFCO to
contain less than 10 ppm gluten
Cream
Hill Estates
Cream Hill submitted a description
of their methods for producing GF oats to the FDA.
Only
Oats
More
on the possible problems with consuming oats as part of the Gluten-Free
diet:
First,
commercially-grown oats, unlilke the specialty oats, are almost
invariably contaminated with wheat or barley. Jane DeMarchi from
the North American Miller's Association spoke at an FDA meeting
on Gluten-Free food labelling in August, 2005, explaining the milling
process and why oats obtained from these large mills are expected
to be contaminated. You can read the transcript and see the slides
of her excellent talk, "Feasibility
of Milling Gluten-Free Flours" on the FDA website.
Four
different lots of McCann's oats, a brand which was at one time thought
to be gluten-free, were tested in 2004 (Thompson).
One sample had no detectable gluten (less than 3 ppm), but the remaining
three samples showed levels of 12, 23, and 725 ppm gluten. In this
same study, Quaker Oats Old-Fashioned samples had levels of 338,
364, 971, and 1807 ppm gluten; Country Choice Old-Fashioned had
one sample with no detectable gluten, and three other samples with
131, 210, and 120 ppm gluten.
One
study indicating this is "The
Molecular Basis for Oat Intolerance in Patients with Celiac Disease".
(You can also read a news
article about this study). People were selected for this study
specifically because they believed they had reacted to oats in the
past. Some of them were shown to be truly having damage from oats,
while others in the study were not.
Recently
the Canadian Celiac Association released: "". There are
important warnings in this statement, and there are also limitations
in the studies on which it is based (Rashid).
In
addition, six potentially reactive portions of the oat gluten protein
were found in "Identification
and Analysis of Multivalent, Proteolytically Resistant Peptides
from Gluten". T cells reacted to oat gluten in a study
by Kilmartin.
CSA
has a web page devoted to
research on oats.
|