Wheat friend or foe

Wheat; friend or foe?

Victor Zevallos 28/09/2023

Dietary wheat has become the most widely consumed food staple in Western and other societies. Wheat has been grown, bred, and progressively introduced into our diet beginning approximately 6000 years ago in central Europe. During the last century, wheat has been systematically bred for high yield, reducing costs, increasing availability, and promoting its use in a broad range of dietary products such as bread, pasta, cakes, meat replacements and other related items.

Wheat is a good source of nutrients, particularly proteins (9-13% of total flour) that can be separated into gluten and non-gluten fractions (85% and 15%, respectively), gluten is a widely used food ingredient due to its unique processing properties, allowing to improve texture of refined foods. Although gluten is not harmful for healthy people, ~1% of most populations are affected by coeliac disease, where gluten proteins trigger an inflammatory response in genetically predisposed individuals, leading to small intestinal damage and a wide range of associated comorbidities.

Wheat proteins have a strong inflammatory potential and apart from respiratory and nutritional allergies, partially digested wheat proteins can activate cells of our immune system, triggering an inflammatory cascade affecting organs such as liver, lungs and even the brain.

Recently, we have identified non-gluten wheat proteins (amylase trypsin inhibitors) as strong activators of immune (myeloid) cells, leading to exacerbation of central nervous system inflammation and worsening of clinical symptoms in a preclinical model of multiple sclerosis. These results indicate that the average Western wheat-based diet could lead to exacerbation of inflammation in the brain, supporting the importance of the gut-brain axis in inflammatory central nervous system diseases.