What is the origin of gluten?

Answer 1

In the 1950's, farmers in England discovered that if they harvested their wheat crop before maturity, products made from the resulting flour had a better (different) taste, foods such as bread would rise quicker and fuller, and baked goods had much improve texture. This phenomenon was investigated and determined to result from the higher gluten content of un-mature wheat. As gluten is present in young wheat plants as food for the wheat plant, mature wheat ends up with very little, if any, remaining gluten.

The result of this knowledge was a fundamental change in the growing and harvesting of wheat. Higher gluten content wheat, or flour, became rather preferred for flour and flour based products due several factors: larger crop yield (not larger wheat plants but more flour from a given wheat plant as gluten is now present); flour density and volume increase; changed (thought of as improved) taste characteristics; improved body and texture of flour based foods.

Over the ensuing decades the food manufacturing industry has embraced gluten as a supplemental ingredient to more and more foods, due to the increased volume, taste, body, and texture of those foods. Food manufacturers want you to believe that they use gluten to improve the protein content of their foods, but don't be fooled. Although this may very well be a factor, the principal reason for the proliferation of gluten in so many foods outside of typical baked goods, is purely cost. More volume translates to lower ingredients cost which leads to higher profits.

It is currently thought that the growing and nearly epidemic coincidence of gluten intolerance among humans consuming high gluten content diets is a result of excessive exposure to gluten, as it blindly appears in so many processed food products. Examples one might never suspect as containing gluten are ice cream, so called "natural" flavorings in everything from Carbonated Beverages to sports drinks to vitamin water and other processed foods, and tea (wheat is used to separate the leaves in a typical tea bag).

Gluten is everywhere and excessive exposure is nearly unavoidable in the western diet without dramatic changes in food consumption.