Is your Gluten Free Bread Recipe giving you Cancer?

How do you know if you have good gut bacteria which helps maintain the health of the cells lining your guts and prevents bowel cancer? This is a valid question for anyone on a gluten free diet and it scares the bejeebers out of me. Malabsorption is a serious issue in Celiac Disease because calcium, vitamin D, Magnesium and fibre, especially soluble fibre, are limited in the gluten free diet.

But... I just found that a new study has concluded that partially replacing corn starch in gluten free breads with tapioca and corn resistant starch can raise dietary fibre significantly but without having a great impact on rheological properties. (I know why can’t they just speak English, what does that mean anyway?? My interpretation is that there will be very little difference in the quality of the baked bread in texture, elasticity etc.)

This is according to an article by Jess Halliday on FoodNavigator.com. She goes on to say, “Typically, gluten-free products contain starch from corn, rice, soy and buckwheat flours - but as the authors of the new study pointed out, these are lacking in important nutrients and dietary fibre. The easiest way to increase the content of dietary fibre in our Gluten Free Bread Recipe is to replace or partially replace the standard ingredients with ingredients naturally rich in fibre. So in a nut shell – let’s get some resistant starch (the starch that we can’t digest) in our gluten free bread recipe to raise dietary fibre and keep our bowels healthy. This resistant starch helps with the good gut bacteria which helps maintain the health of the cells lining our guts and prevents bowel cancer.

Here is a table I borrowed from Wikipedia.

Examples of Naturally-Occurring Resistant Starch

Food Serving Size Resistant Starch (grams)

Navy beans 1/2 cup cooked 9.8

Banana, raw 1 medium, peeled 4.7

Cold potato 1 2” diameter 3.2

Lentils 1/2 cup cooked 2.5

Cold pasta 1 cup 1.9

Pearl barley 1/2 cup cooked 1.6

Oatmeal 1 cup cooked 0.7

Wholegrain bread 2 slices 0.5

We can also find resistant starch in intact wholegrain cereals/seeds/nuts (unprocessed) e.g oats, rye, wheat, barley, semolina, corn, linseed, sesame and processed starchy foods e.g some breakfast cereals (like cornflakes), white bread, rice, pasta. Cooking and cooling food can also increase the resistant starch content, for example cooked cold rice, cold pasta salad and cold boiled potato salad.

The richest source of resistant starch is a natural Australian ingredient called Hi-Maize. It comes from a special breed of corn and is known as the invisible fibre as you can't detect it in foods and drinks. In fact, it doesn't alter the taste, colour or texture of food so you can use it in everyday cooking. You can buy Hi-Maize at health food shops and even on line.

Because of the weaker structure of gluten-free bread compared to normal bread it can be difficult to add in additional nutrients, however I found this gluten free bread recipe with resistant starch on About dot.com. so if you’d like to try it, please follow this link: Flax Seed Bread With Resistant Starch.

Mari Wilson the 80's reveals on Mail Online that her biggest challenge isn't winning over new audiences, it's surviving a catalogue of life-threatening illnesses.

As well as being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of 22, Mari suffers from an underactive thyroid gland and has coeliac disease, a condition in which the lining of the small intestine is damaged by an allergic reaction to gluten.

Mari was put on a gluten-free diet, 'It took six weeks to get me back to feeling healthy but the transformation was amazing and for the first time in three years I felt normal.'

To read more about Mari's struggle with a gluten free diet go to Mail Online.