Are oats safe for coeliacs to eat and do certain types of wheat trigger allergy more than others?

BY JULIE SEAMER

Coeliac disease or CD is the most common gastro-intestinal disorder, affecting 15% of the general population. There is no international agreement as to how much gluten a person with Coealiac disease can tolerate.

Food Standards Australia/New Zealand defines a gluten-free food as having no detectable gluten and it must also contain no oats or malt. However some researchers debate that oats can indeed be tolerated because their gluten component appears less problematic than wheat-derived gluten. The reason why Food Standards include oats as foods to avoid in CD, is not because of the type of gluten they contain, but rather, because current testing methods can't determine accurately the presence of gluten in that grain, or its derivatives ¹.

This may explain why some CD sufferers are able to eat oats, while others can't. There is good evidence that small amounts of oats (50g/day) may be tolerated ² but the results may not be applicable to the Australian population ³ because in this country, oats are grown in rotation with wheat and often barley crops, so are likely to be contaminated from these gluten sources ⁴. Moreover, given that they may have been in contact with wheat at some stage during later processing, this is best assessed on a case-by-case basis depending on individual needs and sensitivities.

The second question is whether certain strains of wheat are more likely to trigger allergic reactions than others. An Italian study comparing different wheat varieties for allergenicity found that pasta wheat displayed lower levels of disease triggering agents than bread cultivars. These findings have implications for CD because they raise the prospect of identifying, or producing by breeding, wheat species with low or absent levels of harmful gluten proteins.

It remains true that adherence to a strict gluten-free diet is the simplest and most effective way to keep flare-ups at bay. For many coeliac suffers, the results of this effort, although sometimes challenging, can be nothing short of remarkable.