Were Native Americans Gluten-Free ?

When did wheat arrive here in North America ? The Europeans introduced new plants and animals that didn't exist in the Americas originally, such as bananas, wheat, sheep, and cows. Important American Indian crops included beans, squash, pumpkins, sunflowers, wild rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, peanuts, avocados, papayas, and chocolate.

Other foods that could be found naturally in the Americas and were often eaten by American Indians included eggs, honey, maple syrup and sugar, salt, nuts (including peanuts, pine nuts, cashews, hickory nuts, and acorns,) fruit (including cranberries, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, chokecherries, wild plums, and persimmons), and a wide variety of beans, roots, and greens.

The most important Native American food crop was Indian corn (also known as maize, which comes from the Taino Indian name for the plant.) The majority of American Indian tribes grew at least some corn, and even tribes that did not grow corn themselves often traded with neighbors for it.

Many, Native Americans are lactose-intolerant and have gluten intolerance or celiac disease –which makes sense among a population only recently exposed to grains containing gluten–but nobody really knows, because there still haven’t been any studies other than within a few individual nations.