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A new study published in

FEMS Microbiology Ecology titled, “Diversity of the cultivable human gut microbiome involved in gluten metabolism: isolation of microorganisms with potential interest for coeliac disease,” has revealed something remarkable about the human gut bacteria (microbiome). Some of the extremely hard to digest proteins in wheat colloquially known as “gluten” (there are actually over 27,000 identified in the wheat proteome) were found metabolizable through a 94 strains of bacterial species isolated from the human gut (via fecal sampling).

This discovery is all the more interesting when you consider that, according to Alessio Fasano, the Medical Director for The University of Maryland’s Center for Celiac Research, the human genome does not possess the ability to produce enzymes capable of breaking down gluten.

As reported on TenderFoodie in interview:

“We do not have the enzymes to break it [gluten] down. It all depends upon how well our intestinal walls close after we ingest it and how our immune system reacts to it.”

The new study helps to fill the knowledge gap as to how humans are capable of dealing with wheat consumption at all.  As we have analyzed in a previous article, The Dark Side of Wheat, the consumption of wheat is a relatively recent dietary practice, stretching back only 10,000 years – a nanosecond in biological time. We simply have not had time to genetically adapt to its consumption (at least not without experiencing over 200 empirically confirmed adverse health effects!).

If bacteria in our microbiome extend our ability to digest physiologically incompatible foods – or at least tolerate them to the degree that they don’t outright kill us – then this may explain why there is such a wide variability in responses to gluten and why the health of our microbiome may play a central role in determining our levels of susceptibility to its adverse effects.