Nutrition and Celiac Disease (MDPI AG - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2014)
During its 2.5 million years of evolution, the human species has evolved through major dramatic changes, mainly dictated by natural elements and, most importantly, by food availability. The diet of hunters and gatherers, hominids, was mainly based on fruit, vegetables, tubers, and occasionally meat and fish. Then, approximately 10,000 years ago, a drastic change in life style occurred, shifting from nomadic to settlers with domestication of animals and crops. A consequence of this change was the advent of wheat and other grains containing gluten-related proteins in human diet. This revolutionary transformation occurred at the Fertile Crescent, the modern-day Iraq, and spread from South to North and East to West at a speed of approximately 1 km/year. Ever since, the distribution of food goods became more and more uneven with wealthy countries getting more than necessary, while poor countries struggle with malnutrition and consequently this increased mortality. Unfortunately, the industrial revolution, rather than closing the gap, created even more inequalities that still exist today, leading to very different but equally worrisome pathologies, namely obesity in industrialized countries and famine in developing countries. [...]