Samuel Gee starched foods should be avoided. He forbids rice, sago, fruit and vegetables. Raw meat is recommended as are thin slices of toasted bread. Gee highlights particular success with a child "who was fed upon a quart of the best Dutch mussels daily". However, the child cannot bear this diet for more than one season. The cause of coeliac disease was eventually discovered to be an autoimmune reaction to gliadin, a gluten protein found in wheat, plus Secalin in rye and Hordien in barley. The lining of the small bowel is flattened, which interferes with the absorption of nutrients. Gee would
Anti-gliadin antibodies in food products. Some of these antibodies can recognize only wheat prolamins or very closely related grass seeds; others can detect antigens over broad taxa. The G12 antibody is the newest example which detects the most immunotoxic fragment, a 33-mer peptide from �-2 gliadin; available from Romer Laboratories and the Spanish company Biomedal. It recognizes the toxic fraction of wheat, barley, rye and also of oat. The R5 sandwich assay is another such assay. This assay can recognize wheat, barley and rye, which makes it ideal for evaluating the presence of contaminants in gluten-free foods that do not contain oat.