I'm NOT Crazy!

I called Sami's Bakery in Florida today. They are the makers of the fantastic bread (and bagels, lavash, and millet chips) that my CAG recommends and sells. It is super good! But I could have sworn it is what triggered this whole 'Big D' business because of the wheat it has.

CAG told me I was crazy when I saw him last week (well, no, he didn't, he just said that Celiac's eat that bread). But in my Googling for Sami's phone number, I found a discussion thread that actually states over and over again the bread from Sami's Bakery, while tasty, is NOT gluten/wheat free because it's made in a place full of wheat and probably made on things that are full of wheat.

Someone actually sent the actual bread off to be tested for gluten parts-per-million (ppm) and it was too 'high' for Celiacs. I am beyond glad, because that gives me some direction.

The link to the thread is here. It's a Gluten Free Forum. Here is a quote from one of the posts:


"We sent 2 samples of Sami's products - the millet & flax hamburger bun and the plain millet bread to University of Nebraska, Lincoln to be tested for gluten. Here is what they sd. The gluten testing of the bun and bread samples that we received on Tues, Feb 13th, 2007 has been completed. The results are listed below:

Sample Millet & flax hamb bun >5000 ppm
Plain millet bread >5000 ppm
 
The lower limit of detection for the R-Biophar Ridascreen Fast Gliadin is 10
parts per million (ppm) gluten. Amounts below this level cannot be reliably
detected in this assay. One ppm is equal to one milligram of gluten per
kilogram of sample product."
 
A gluten-free dietician also posts on Sami's Bakery: Test Results for Sami's Bakery Products. Apparently none of the gluten-free products are actually testing gluten-free (less than 20 ppm) and the millet and flax products (which don't directly contain gluten, but aren't labeled gluten-free) are also contaminated.

And the last link I looked at was a podcast from a blog called Hold the Gluten in which the author gives her own sad Sami's Bakery story; apparently she was glutened by millet and flax hamburger buns.

I guess what I'm saying is that it IS entirely possible that those bagels I ate had wheat and gluten in them. I'm also saying that I'm still not convinced I don't have Celiac Disease. There are other problems going on, other possible 'allergies', so who the hell knows. But I am going to pretend as if I do have Celiac Disease and if the treatment works then....?