Gluten is a protein our body cannot do without. Despite this, it sometimes happens that its presence in the diet causes unpleasant ailments. People with celiac disease should mainly give up eating gluten. Sometimes, however, it is excluded from the diet by people who do not suffer from celiac disease, but who see it as the cause of their digestive system problems. Researchers from the University of Oslo and Monash University in Australia have found that the stomach problems attributed to gluten can be triggered by fructans, or sugars.
A gluten-free diet is considered by many to be the perfect combination of a healthy, balanced diet and a way to get a shapely figure. Unfortunately, research does not follow this belief. Doctors and scientists emphasize that giving up gluten makes sense only in the case of people suffering from celiac disease, i.e. celiac disease. In other cases, it can cause more harm than good. Recent studies only confirm this, but also indicate that the cause of discomfort does not have to be gluten.
Researchers in Oslo and Melbourne had previously suspected that the real cause of stomach problems was fructans, which are sugars found in wheat, barley, rye, onions, garlic, chickpeas and cabbage. This is confirmed by research conducted by scientists.
The experiment included 59 people who do not suffer from celiac disease, but are on a gluten-free diet due to digestive problems. The participants were asked to supplement their diet with specially prepared bars. Initially, they would eat one bar a day for a week. Then take a week’s break and go back to eating bars again. They had to repeat the whole cycle several times.
The participants of the experiment did not know that bars that looked and tasted identical differed in composition. One week they ate gluten bars, another week with fructans, and another week without both.
It turned out that the gluten bars had no effect on the subjects, as did the gluten-free and fructan-free ones. It was different with fructan bars. After eating them, test participants more often complained of bloating or other bothersome ailments from the digestive system.
According to co-author Jane Muir of Monash University, this may explain why people with an oversensitive gut experience an improvement in gluten-free diets, but do not get rid of symptoms completely. By limiting wheat, they also reduce the amount of fructans consumed – but they are still found in other dishes, such as those containing onions.
If further research confirms that fructans are responsible for some digestive problems, people suffering from oversensitive intestines will be able to expand their diet – including gluten-free but fructan-free, soy sauce or sourdough bread.