I just now "found" this thread, it looks like an interesting read. After I catch up I'll add my two cents. Has any one gone gluten free on this bread thing yet?
I have a gluten sensitivity that sent me to the ER with food lodged in my esophagus twice before I figured it out. Most of my life I've always had to wash food down with something to drink and didn't realize that was an allergic condition (called eosinophilic esophagitis). The first time in my life that I was able to eat food without a glass of water at the ready was a year ago when I was on a diet that basically eliminated all common allergens.
Did a huge amount of research on the subject, and feel I have something of a handle on it now. Basically it boils down to the fact that gluten and dairy are the two most irritating substances people eat. Not a problem if you're completely healthy, but if your gut flora are compromised, the intestinal lining becomes porous and allows undigested food particles directly into the bloodstream, triggering an immune response. That's at the root of all sorts of diseases, particularly anything considered to be autoimmune. This might manifest as arthritis (I had sore knees in my early 30s despite being very active - it went away when I stopped eating gluten), phlegm, or a whole host of other symptoms that we wouldn't think of as allergic reactions.
I managed to heal up enough that I'm able to eat gluten without complete blockages of the esophagus anymore, but it still causes my esophagus to inflame and slows food down.
I think the problem is that we consume a lot of really bad stuff these days, and use a lot of antibiotics - all of which have terrible effects on critical gut bacteria. Most all pork and chicken is raised with "medicinal food additives" (aka anti-biotics) such as is those made by my old employer (Zoetis). Roundup is showing up in food at levels that we *know* messes up gut bacteria (Monsanto even has a patent on it for it's antibiotic effects!).
Go back a few generations to your parents or grandparents who grew up before antibiotics, and you'll hear far fewer stories of allergies. That's definitely the case in my family. Exposure to all of this stuff early in life can mess a person up more or less permanently. I also suspect that plastics used in food packaging are playing a big role, as we've learned that most are leaching endocrine disruptors, and are even being shown to breach the blood-brain barrier and cause cognitive problems.
I'm guessing the average age on this website is such that most grew up before a lot of these toxins came about - and thus think that a lot of this stuff is nonsense based on their personal experience. Younger generations aren't so lucky. Little kids often get Cheerios as their first finger food, and that's been shown to have 12 parts per million of glyphosate (aka Roundup) when studies show problems starting at less than 1/100th that amount. But here in the Corporate States of America, anything goes as long as the folks making a buck "donate" to the right politician (which is nearly all of them). And we have television to ensure us that the status quo is just fine.
