the smell of toast
 

Is the smell of something with gluten in it, either baking or toasting, harmful to us who are gluten intolerant, or not?

Such as toast toasting, a cake or bread baking, spagetti noodles boiling, or whatever?

Are we suppossed to avoid a kitchen where something is being made from scratch where wheat flour might be in the air?

Or is it more that a small dusting of the flour might land on something else that we might eat?

Thanks, 1Bea in Ohio, two DQ1 genes

Hi Bea1,

I don't think we need to worry about smelling gluten, but free flying flour dust can be a problem for people with celiac disease, gluten sensitivity, or wheat allergy. Cross contamination is also an issue... if gluten containing flour dust, crumbs, etc., land on other food we eat.

Gluten is even found in drywall mud, and some people have become symptomatic from inhaling drywall dust when remodeling, etc.

Different people react differently to small exposures like that, but the idea is to limit those small exposures as much as possible. They add up.

Cara

Supposedly not, but it smells awful to me!!!

However...too much and I seem to get mild "glutened" symptoms (including abdominal and cravings) I don't know why; or if its partly in my head (I was just talking about corn and the pavlovian theory on another site...)

I don't think smelling it would be harmful (but then I didn't think eating it was harmful either!).

I don't think we react to the smell... ds is pretty super-sensitive (our canary in the coalmine - so to speak) and he doesn't react if we go into a bakery area or anything... but if we spend time in a gluten household and he touches a lot of stuff... esp. the kitchen table it seems... he's sick afterward. Kids do a lot of hand-to-face touching... esp. allergic kids because they rub their noses a lot. I've tried to train mine to rub with their arms and not their little fists/hands and their generally good about it but sometimes they forget.