White Bread

[tipper]

Sorry if this has been asked a million times before, but I keep seeing that white bread is supposed to be safe as long as sugar isn't listed as an ingredient. Is this true? Do HFI'ers react to white bread that doesn't have sugar listed as an ingredient? 

[Stefanie (Ziba)]

All wheat has fructans, so in my experience, eating too much wheat produces some symptoms (perhaps only in children which is my only point of reference so far). If my son eats no more than 1-2 wheat (white flour) products, he is OK but more than that and I notice symptoms. His wheat products are either artisan crackers (ingredients are only white flour, salt, baking soda and yeast), french bread (salt, white flour, yeast) and plain pasta (semolina). He can also eat white potato in limited amounts. So, 90% of his diet is animal proteins and fats and that seems to be the healthiest and safest routine.
Hope this helps.

[tipper]

I thought fructans would only affect people with fructose malabsorption? Not people with HFI... ?

[tummyache]

I, too, have trouble with wheat, suspecting it may be the fructans [which is a starch made up of a long chain of fructose molecules. During digestion the fructose break off one by one as the chain comes apart.] Sometimes if I eat wheat I get mild asthma-like symptoms with mild lung tightness; but, if I take an enzyme I don't get it. The enzyme is called: Carb Digest with Isogest by Kirkman [which I found out about on the Congenital Sucrase-Isomaltase Deficiency site,"CSID Parents & Child"...it helps with Sucrase + Starch problems/SI gene deficiency; unfortunately not our problem, not HFI/ ALDOB gene deficiency] Anyway, I can eat French bread or sour dough bread or any other bread that does not have dairy or sugars added, if I take my enzyme with it. I have been tested for Celiac every way possible and all tests were negative so far. I may just be allergic, but that doesn't explain why the enzyme works. I don't know if it would help anyone else or not, but it consistently works for me.

[tipper]

Hi tummyache. Thank you for the reply! Do you get hypoglycemic from wheat at all?

[tummyache]

I am not sure if wheat causes the hypo or not as I am plagued by it usually more mildly now, on our diet. I am going to be 75 yrs old in a couple of weeks -- unfortunately, when we become seniors things don't always work like they did when younger, in any event. [I'm an avid lap swimmer, so rather active and very healthy for my age; but certainly have had food issues from birth, especially with sugars and dairy.] Being so old, I have been searching for answers for many years from many doctors who didn't know much. Been tested for lots of things in many ways. I am NOT diabetic! Probably do not have celiac; but am borderline for CSID [may be reflected in the fact that sucrose is a disaccharide of fructrose/glucose]. It was the UT-Austin researchers/doctors in the early 1970's told me I was very definitely fructose intolerant [before DNA]. Later, I did 23andMe, who said was negative for HFI, but they only tested a couple of ALDOB SNP's.

Edit: Recently, I was checking the old 23andMe unedited raw data from way-back when in my files, and I found positive pathogenic DNA SNPs which listed both Glycogen Storage Disease (6) [PYGL gene] + fructose 1,6 bis-phosphatase deficiency [FBP1 gene]. Hum! Evidently these two are somewhat related as defects occur along the same path-way near each other --so explains seeing them listed together. I went back and did a re-run, and sure enough...they have dropped the SNPs from the lists 23andMe report on currently. Interesting!