Safe Or Not?

[Guest spruette]

Since I am new to Celiac, was wondering what the experiences were with Oats and other Celiacs. Has anyone had a bad experience? Do you eat oats?

[KaitiUSA]

Since I have been gluten-free I have stayed away from oats. It has been highly debateable if celiacs can have oats or not. At this point I will personally not eat oats.

[angel-jd1]

There is an article in the most recent issue of Gluten Free Living. It talks about contamination of oats.

A registered dietician took 12 containers of rolled or steel cut oats that represented 4 different lots of three brand names. The brands being McCanns, Country Choice, and Quaker.

The ELISA R5 test was used on the 12 samples. All of the brands showed contamination!!!

McCann's

1st- below level of detection (so under 3ppm)

2st- below 20ppm

3nd- 23ppm

4rd- 725ppm

Country Choice

1st- below 20ppm

2nd-4th ranged from 120-210ppm

Quaker

All four tested from 338-1807ppm

Under 20ppm is the codex standard used to determine Gluten free.........but all of the brands showed some crazy levels of contamination and were inconsistent. I wouldn't trust them!!

-Jessica

[Guest spruette]

Wow! I am not sure what those numbers mean, but it does seem highly contamintated. That is enough to shy me away from them. Thank you so much for your input. I haven't had any oats yet, and so grateful now that I haven't. **BIG THANK YOU**

[tarnalberry]

In addition to the contamination, another recent study (which, I believe, I found on the celiac.com main site) has shown that there are some people who do have reactions specifically to avenin (the oat protein that is similar, but not identical, in structure to gliandin, the wheat protein). Antibodies specifically addressing avenin were found in - I think - about a third of the celiac patients studied. So even without contamination, it appears that some celiacs really are intolerant to oats as well.

[celiac3270]

Yes--it's not that debatable anymore--the contamination is just so likely that you'd be taking a huge chance of being contaminated, either from the fields that had previously been used for growing wheat or rye, from the mill, etc. The odds are so great that we don't even need to go into the structure of the oats--because they're already problematic just from contamination.

[jknnej]

I don't eat them, either, and I used to love oatmeal!

Every time I feel a complaint about the diet coming on, I just think:

Is it worth it to have something that makes me feel so bad?

So I stay away from anything questionable. I'm even giving up gluten-free restaurants now, which is my saddest moment ever.