Why is wheat making people sick?
The emerging condition linked to gluten and the fight over how to treat it
Gluten-free is booming – it’s become a multi-billion dollar industry, supermarket aisles are crammed with products, with a number of high-profile celebrities endorsing their health impacts.
But this is much more than a fad diet - doctors are seeing a growing number of patients who have serious problems with this protein, most commonly found in wheat products like bread and pasta. And, an increasing number of these patients do not have coeliac disease - for a long time the adverse reaction most commonly associated with wheat.
So what’s going on? Graihagh Jackson hears about an emerging condition called non-coeliac gluten sensitivity, which could be affecting hundreds of millions of people worldwide, and meets the doctors fighting over how best to treat it. She asks why this condition is spreading so fast – could it be something to do with our modern lives and diets? And are wheat and gluten entirely to blame, or could there be dangers lurking in a whole range of other foods?
(Picture: A woman's hand touching wheat in a field. Credit: Getty Images/Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú)
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Pumping up gluten balloons
Duration: 01:14
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- Thu 6 Feb 2020 02:32GMTÂ鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú World Service West and Central Africa
- Thu 6 Feb 2020 03:32GMTÂ鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú World Service Europe and the Middle East
- Thu 6 Feb 2020 04:32GMTÂ鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú World Service Online & UK DAB/Freeview only
- Thu 6 Feb 2020 05:32GMTÂ鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú World Service Australasia, Americas and the Caribbean, South Asia & East Asia only
- Thu 6 Feb 2020 11:32GMTÂ鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú World Service except West and Central Africa
- Thu 6 Feb 2020 18:32GMTÂ鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú World Service Australasia
- Thu 6 Feb 2020 21:32GMTÂ鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú World Service East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa only
- Thu 6 Feb 2020 23:32GMTÂ鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú World Service except East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa
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The Food Chain
Examining what it takes to put food on your plate