Table of Contents

Updates

• 1/29/2020: Sorry it took so long, but next blog topic is up! BOY is this one a doozy!
• 10/22/2019: Hi guys! I finally have been able to include comments, located at the bottom part of this page. Thank you for reading!

Who am I?*

My name is Nawal Atoura and I am religiously married to a wonderful man named Mustafa Khan.

I have had many people tell me that they think my life is interesting and what I talk about is riveting. As such, I hope that this blog is both entertaining and thought-provoking.

I first want to say that I may sprinkle my blog with the basics of gluten-free but that it's not meant to educate you on just the basics. Other people have gone over the basics probably better than I can - and there are TONS of people who do that, especially on Instagram. People like…

• ServingCeliacs
• Forglutensake
• Glutenproblems (and more..)

Instead, I want to talk about things that other people [perhaps!] haven't thought about! I like controversy, pushing boundaries, and exploring new and interesting things. Hence why I've chosen the "inquisitor."

I am also...

• A law Student (J.D. Candidate 2019!!)
  • and FUTURE LITIGATOR!
• A fur mommy
  • I have two wonderful cats Twinky and Luna (more on them later!)
• A Foodie (duh)
• And I love doing my nails when I can! #jamberry
• You can catch me on Instagram and Twitter...just look up "NawalAtoura"

I will try to keep things concise, so I'll end this here. I have "outlined" various new topics and those are on the page.

What is Gluten EXACTLY?

Gluten. So familiar and so Alien. For those of us who are on gluten-free diets we typically know what not to eat.

But do we know exactly what it is that we're not eating?

Since becoming a celiac I have been fascinated with the science behind it. I don't like doing things, typically, unless I can understand WHY.

So I thought to myself…what the heck IS gluten exactly?

Gliadin and Glutenin - the little buggers

In sum: there are tiny proteins that exist inside of grains like barley, wheat, and rye that when they combine with water they become gluten.

Those little buggers are called gliadin and glutenin.

Now if you like a little more details, the cooking science guy does a great job here --> http://www.cookingscienceguy.com/pages/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Explaining-Gluten.pdf

The plant's meat! SEE and FEEL gluten

So, those little proteins are what cause all of this hullaballoo. Did you know you can ACTULLY see it? I think this is important to really visualize what gluten is, so you know what's causing all the mess! It's basically a brown rubber ball that you can find in dough, those tiny pieces can get caught up in other foods.

Here's a great video explaining it! You can LITERALLY wash away all the non-gluten parts of flour and be left with a pure little gluten-ball. Neat right? --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDEcvSc2UKA

This is going to be KEY to understanding the "parts per million" concept I'll talk about in a future blog. But you need to know the basics.

This is why you can't "disinfect" gluten - because think of it like meat. You can't disinfect a piece of meat and then eat it and it's not meat right? Right. It's still meat. So if you left a little piece of meat on a plate, and it didn't wash off, you then eat it later…what did you eat? Yes, you got it - MEAT. Lol!

That's why good cleaning is imperative.

Let me leave you with an important nugget of information to understand as well. If you watched that YouTube video you'll see that not all the flour is gluten. That's correct. Flours come with different percentages of gluten. Another concept you should digest and understand.

If you have a keen mind you might be asking yourself questions like this:

So can I technically eat the wheat grain if they weren't combined with water?

What about wheat or barley TEA - if you steeped grains in water and just had water does that mean there's no protein in that water?

What does 20 parts per million mean then if flour isn't pure gluten?

Can gluten be "killed" or "broken down" then?

All good questions! All questions we might delve into later. I hope you can understand a little bit more clearly now WHAT gluten is exactly.

It's protein. It's found in certain things. It's like the plant's meat. Now you know EXACTLY what it is you're not eating and you can put a FACE to the gluten-monster we all face lol.

Happy eating!

Can you cheat the PPM (parts per million)?

If you're reading this, you understand the basics of gluten, and you're probably at least an intermediate with identifying gluten sources. You know what gliadin and glutenin are and you get at least a little how gluten exists and how it comes about right? I mean we're not rocket scientists here, but if you're not confused so far, then we're good to go!

Parts per million or "ppm" for short, is the FDA limit for what can be termed "gluten-free." For celiacs, this can be a controversial issue. Some celiacs have been shown to tolerate as much as 50 ppm or be affected by as little as 3 ppm. I rant about this issue a little in a video I did for my product chippita…here -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFnPeJHgYgY

And I read into it from several sources. Here's the article where Nima talks about the thresholds here: https://nimasensor.com/2017/03/24/gluten-levels-in-food-20-ppm-debate/

And here's the study they refer to here: https://www.coeliac.org.au/uploads/65701/ufiles/Research/Final_Report_SLG.pdf

Essentially, most people go with the idea "better safe than sorry" but the PPM debate is KEY when discussing things like cross-contamination or developing products/medicine that could help future celiacs.

But has anyone really explained to you HOW much this REALLY is? Probably not. In fact, it took SO MUCH research for me to find any real comparisons, and I found something that said about 1/186th of a slice of bread but alas I lost the website and can no longer find it. The other, I came up with myself and is just the common-sense interpretation of "parts per million."

The gluten free dietician describes it as a percentage of .002%: https://www.glutenfreedietitian.com/how-much-gluten-is-20-parts-per-million/ that if one slice of bread had only 20ppm it would contain .57mg of gluten. And an important point, more to what I'm trying to say, describes it as 20mg per 1kg of food.

Here: they describe it in terms of marbles: https://www.verywellfit.com/what-does-parts-per-million-mean-562490

Ok, here's where we try to do some math to really understand it. The problem is that there are TWO different aspects to understanding "ppm" that people try to combine, even the people who have described it above have not fully explained how they can even get to that amount. Now, this next part is hard to understand so try to stay with me, it also still somewhat theoretical. Not enough studies on celiacs to confirm.

First, PPM is a RATIO. Meaning, it's based on the TOTAL amount of food consumed at any given time. It is not an AMOUNT of food (per se).

Secondly, converting that to an "amount" (let's say, grams) would require knowing how much a celiac ate at any given time.

To visualize this and to help you understand this, we're going to have to assume a few things, and I'm going to break it down in terms of a slice of bread.

1. A slice of bread weighs 38 grams (average)
2. When I say "gluten free" bread, for this thought experiment, means absolutely 0 gluten
3. A slice of "regular bread" contains about 14% gluten

The answer? If a celiac ate the amount of 1 slice of gluten-free bread (absolutely 0 gluten) 20 ppm would mean they could "handle" up to .00076grams of gluten, or .76mg.

What does that look like for a regular slice of bread? Basically, 1/7000th of a piece of bread, or .0054grams. That's a REALLY TINY crumb. It's hard to represent that on computer but I tried here:

Click here for a visual, you'll be taken to another page, that can link you back here.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

Thought experiment:

• Well, in part, this implies that the amount of gluten that affects us is also (at least partially) dependent on the amount of food you eat. If you ate just that little red square above and nothing else, then there's probably no doubt it would affect you. But eating that 1/3 red square with the rest of the 38 grams of the bread and you'd be ok.
• But let's say you had a full red square..and what if you ate it with more food? You would need to eat at least 6 slices of bread that was TOTALLY gluten-free and you'd probably still be ok.
• Basically, if there's a small amount of gluten you know you ate, and you could eat a lot more food then you could…theoretically reduce the effects of that gluten consumed.
• So can you cheat the PPM? Well, in this thought experiment, maybe. If you accidentally ingested an amount of gluten you can ascertain...then you just need to eat more gluten-free food to increase the ratio, and you just might fool your intestines.

Of course, this is just a thought experiment because without super-controlled conditions how could we ever know just HOW MUCH gluten we ate? We can't.

Now…This is for understanding, for potentially new things to be discovered but….this kind of thought isn't really practical. But by understanding, you can appreciate just how risky regular food is, and just how important accuracy is for gluten-free companies to adhere to gluten-free protocols. This will also help you appreciate just how significant controversial issues like "mechanical separation" and "gluten-free oats" might be.

WHAT MIGHT BE PRACTICAL TO UNDERSTAND?

• Well if you want a more practical amount, let's say that at any given meal the average person consumes half a pound of food. (.5lb). How much of half a pound would be a tolerable 20ppm?
  • Well, then you would need to take 1/50,000th of that amount of food (.5/50,000)
  • And you would get .00001lbs of food
    • Or .00016oz
    • Or about 4.53mg of food
      • MATH: (.5lb of food is about 226.796g of food, take (226.796/50,000)*1000)
  • What does that look like in bread? Well, at 38grams, you're now looking at almost 6 slices of bread to be .5lbs of food (5.97 slices to be exact) and only a crumb that weighs no more than 4.53mg of gluten could have been in those 6 slices of bread.
    • Why is that so hard to visualize? Consider a small packet of salt that you might get from like a fast-food restaurant might weigh like 500mg. So you're talking only a TEENSY amount of salt to be 4.53mg. Less than .01 of that salt packet.

For everyone who stuck through reading this with me, thank you. I hope this helped. It took a long time for me to bread this down into what I hope is digestible information for most of you.

****FOR THOSE WHO WANT THE ACTUAL MATH****

• 20PPM = 20/1,000,000
• = 2/100,000
• = 1/50,000
• 38 grams of gluten free bread consumed, 20 ppm would be
  • 38/50,000 = .00076g tolerated
• 14% of 38g (regular slice of bread) = 5.32g total gluten in bread
  • 5.32/.00076 = 7,000 (take the total gluten, divide it by the amount of grams tolerable per a 38g serving, you get 1/7000th of a slice of bread)
  • 38g (of bread) / 7000 = .0054g (take 38g (which is an average slice of regular bread) and divide that by the 7000 to give you .0054g of regular bread

Soy Sauce: SOy misunderstood

• coming soon

What do I do when I get glutened...and why?

• coming soon

The Bougie Foodie

• coming soon