In the beginning, nothing was obvious. New things become obvious every day.

zaroth · on April 7, 2018

Definitely it’s not obvious that gluten specifically would be the cause, but seemingly obvious to test specialized diets?

So I guess I’m surprised people didn’t discover “avoid wheat” a lot sooner even if it took until the late 20th century to actually understand the mechanism.

megaman22 · on April 7, 2018

Wheat was such a fundamental part of European diets until relatively recently that I suspect most serious celiacs died in childhood in earlier times.

toyg · on April 7, 2018

Or just lived with minor discomfort, as plant strains were different and were consumed in much lower quantities anyway.

mirimir · on April 7, 2018

Celiac disease is far more severe than what's now called "gluten intolerance". But maybe they're related.

I get that "Celiac disease results from genetic abnormal immune response to gluten."[0] I'm not sure what that means, in detail. Perhaps there's a particular allele of one of the immunoglobulin genes. But whatever it is, perhaps other alleles cause "gluten intolerance" of varying severity.

0) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16095159

cimmanom · on April 7, 2018

Per the article, mortality rates in children with celiac were extremely high until alternative diets were discovered.

has2k1 · on April 7, 2018

That the ailment is nutrition based competes with all other factors. It is a giant diagnosis problem, not a just a nutritional elimination problem.

lostlogin · on April 7, 2018

Combined with this with the role bread used to play. It was a massive part of diets until relatively recently when we turned bread bland and relatively nutrician free with mass production techniques.