@Setanta,
Quote:So, i wonder, did children who were "lactose intolerant" or allergic to gluten simply die in childhood in centureis gone by?
My cousin and his family lived in Mongolia for years. He was an ESL teacher there. His little girl had so many illnesses. Stomach aches, hair and teeth falling out, she was not thriving at all. Found out through a tick bite when they had to go to Thailand because she got Lyme disease, that she had celiac disease.
So essentially she was starving to death because the bread they were eating caused the cilia in her intestines to die, or something like that and she was not absorbing nutrients.
So yeah - the kids back in the day that had that problem probably starved to death without their parents even knowing that was the problem. They were eating - but their body was not processing correctly because of the allergy.