Gluten Bread Disease

Gluten and Coeliac Disease

What is Gluten? Cathal Ryan 12429522

Gluten is part of one of the most widely used cereal products in the world, bread. Without gluten, bread is simply not the same. It is a building block of bread and is a major player in western diets .It plays a deciding role in the baking quality of wheat by conferring water absorption capacity and elasticity on the dough that is being baked. (Wieser, 2007) Gluten is all that is left after the water soluble parts of bread have been removed as well as all the starch granules. It has a rubbery texture when removed from bread and is only present in processed grains.

Gluten is an endosperm of wheat, barley and rye (Figoni, 2003). It

Both have their own differing contributions to the unique properties of bread. The relative amounts will decide the elasticity, cohesivity, water absorption capacity and viscosity of the bread. Gliadins are responsible mainly for the viscosity of the dough in bread. (Wieser, 2007) Glutenins give dough its elasticity and strength. The strength of the disulphide bonds between gliadins and glutenins decides these properties (Bryan Reuben, 2009). They both contribute in their own way to give bread its characteristic properties. In a nutshell, Gluten is made of two parts and these two parts give it its character. (Wieser, 2007)

Works Cited

Bryan Reuben, T. C., 2009. On the rise. Chemistry World, Volume Oct, pp. 54-57.

Figoni, 2003. How baking works. In: How baking works. s.l.:John Wiley & Sons Inc, pp. 63-86.

R.W Jones, G. B. N. T. F. S., 1961. Molecular weights of wheat gluten fractions. Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics, 94(3), pp. 483-491.

Wieser, H., 2007. Chemistry of Gluten Proteins. Food Microbiology, Volume 24, pp.

Celiac diet: its impact on quality of life. J Am Diet Assoc. 2003;103:1533–1535. [PubMed].

Coeliac Disease Dean Wright 13359226

Coeliac disease is a long-term autoimmune disease of the small intestine associated with a high intolerance to gluten. Prior to the 1940's, little was known about the causes behind the disease and treatments were often biologically irrelevant and useless. The Dutch famine of 1944 (a time when bread became unavailable) is said to have offset the discovery of a wheat-linked cause to the disease but it was not until 1952 that the important link with gluten was made by a research team in Birmingham, England. The 1960's provided a refinement in the knowledge of the disease and led to the modern understanding of Coeliac Disease that we have today.

Coeliac disease affects 1% of people of European populations however only 0.14% of the population are actually diagnosed with the disease.1

This leaves the implication that 90% of the affected are not actually diagnosed with coeliac disease explicitly. This is due to the difficulty in diagnosing the disease as explicit symptoms of coeliac disease do not exist. Many of the presented symptoms are shared with other diseases.

Disease