Food Industry

Gluten

Gluten intolerance or celiac disease (CE) affects around 1% of the world population. Likewise, more and more people are deciding to avoid the consumption of food with gluten. This has increased the availability of gluten-free food products and the requirement to closely monitor the level of gluten in these products. The Codex Standard 118 and recent regulations of the European Union define that gluten-free food for particular nutritional uses (PARNUTS) shall contain less than 20 ppm (mg/kg). On the other hand, PARNUTS foods above 20 ppm and under 100 ppm shall be labeled as very low in gluten. The Argentine Food Code defines gluten-free foods as those containing less than 10 ppm of gluten. According to this legislation, gluten is a type of proteins called prolamins (gliadin in wheat, avenin in oat, hordein in barley and secalin in rye).