How harmful is cross-contamination for individuals who are gluten intolerant?
This is hard to quantify. In the case of celiacs, gluten acts like a switch, the merest hint will start the auto-immune reaction which results in the body attacking itself. This continues till the gluten is completely gone, which can take up to 3 weeks. For these people, cross-contamination is a very serious issue. There’s little research on how gluten intolerance of other types works – or even if all types of gluten intolerance are, in fact, just different forms of celiac disease. It’s safest to assume that cross-contamination is as much of an issue for what some call non-celiac gluten intolerants as for celiacs, because we just don’t know for sure.
