Food Glue

What is with all the gluten insensitivity!! We never heard 'gluten intolerant' or 'celiac disease' when we were kids! Everyone ate bread and pizza freely. Now, gluten issues are everywhere—what's going on?

It's probably not so much changes in wheat. Some blame an obscure little enzyme in processed foods: microbial transglutaminase, or mTG. They call it meat glue, or food glue because it can glue together scraps of fish, chicken and meat into whole-looking cuts, make yogurt firmer, extend the shelf life of processed foods, improve texture, especially in low-salt, low-fat products, and make bread and pastries (particularly gluten-free ones) rise better,

So, what’s the worry? mTG mimics our body's tissue transglutaminase, a key trigger in celiac disease. Together they form new protein complexes that trigger immune responses, increase leaky gut, and sensitize people to gluten. Most people with gluten sensitivity can tolerate some gluten, but mTG seems to drop the threshold fueling an increase in celiac and autoimmunity. It’s not a proven cause, but studies show these new complexes can really complicate things. Something is causing gluten problems in numbers we’ve never seen before. And I’m not hearing a lot of good answers. Could mTG be part of that?

Now, we get mTG from some plants and vegetables, even probiotics, and they don’t cause harm. But the increased amounts we are getting from a surge of processed foods has some scientists worried. They’re suggesting this higher mTG presence is pushing some prone individuals over the top into a full blown immune response we call Celiac Disease. And it’s miserable!

Ajinomoto, the Japanese developer and the dominant producer of mTG under the brand name Activa declared it as GRAS 27 years ago. And they’ve gradually put it in more and more food types over the years by just self affirming its safety. As part of that process they conducted a toxicity study on dogs that, according to their own documents, turned up lower prostate gland weights, a pituitary gland cyst, discoloration of the lungs, and an enlarged uterus, yet they reported to the FDA that all levels of dietary exposure to mTG were “well tolerated and no treatment-related adverse effects were observed.

But here’s what really bothers me. Most of the time when it’s used, you can’t tell it’s in your food because the FDA classifies it as a processing aid. The manufacturer simply declares it non-functional in the final product or in trace amounts as a processing aid, and presto chango, they don’t have to list it in the ingredients like other food additives, except on meat. So we have no idea how much we’re getting. This is another example of why processed food should not be the majority of what you eat. It’s hard to tell where the chemicals end and the food begins.

Is mTG the gluten crisis culprit? More research is definitely needed, but we deserve to know right now if it’s in what we’re eating. If you have an issue with it, how can you avoid it? We need more truth in labeling, so when you hear RFK or the surgeon general talking about food labels, you should be interested. This gluten intolerance is getting, well, intolerable.