Europe is known for its food.

You’ve got flaky croissants in France, pasteis de nata in Portugal, and pretzels the size of your head in Germany. It’s a paradise for carb-lovers.

But risks lurk around every  adorable corner cafe for celiacs: people who can’t properly absorb  the gluteny goodness in breadstuffs. Except, if you spend a little  time scrolling on TikTok, you might hear that European  gluten is just built different. Plenty of people online say that when  they eat gluten in the United States, it makes them feel bloated,  brain-foggy, or just generally terrible.

But when they head to Europe  and load up on bread and pasta, it’s smooth sailing. No symptoms, no problems. Just  wiener schnitzel and good vibes.

It’s a compelling idea, especially if you’re someone  who has been avoiding gluten and dreaming of an excuse to fly  to Paris for a pain au chocolat. But before you start planning your  “best baguettes of France” tour, you need to know the different reasons  some people steer clear of gluten and what scientists say about European gluten. So grab a pizza, or a gluten free  pizza, and settle in for the answers. [SciShow music] If you’re trying to avoid gluten, first you have to know what gluten even is.

Which is more complicated than it sounds, because gluten isn’t one thing. It’s a whole group of proteins  found in wheat, barley, and rye. And it’s kind of a star in the baking world.

It gives these types of foods their chewiness, stretch, and moisture. Recreating that texture  without gluten is… not easy. That’s why gluten-free breads  are often dense, crumbly, and taste like they lost a fight with a sandbox.

Which makes it almost unfathomable that many people choose to forego it. But often, there’s a good reason. Like celiac disease: an autoimmune condition where the body mistakes gluten  proteins for dangerous foreign invaders and launches an attack that damages  your own tissues in the process.

This attack happens in your small intestine, which is normally covered in a shag-carpet  like mat of tiny projections called villi. These villi massively increase the  surface area of your small intestine so that you can soak up all the  nutrients your body needs from your food. But when you have celiac disease, it's like somebody took a  lawnmower to your shag carpet.

The villi get flattened and your  nutrient absorption can take a nosedive. That can lead to vitamin and mineral deficiencies, but it can also cause all sorts of  unpleasant gastrointestinal symptoms. Which is why, for people with celiac disease, a bread crumb isn’t just a crumb, it's like throwing a rock at  a beehive.

Inside your body. The good news for more than half of  you is that celiac disease is genetic. So if you are part of the 60% of the  population that doesn’t have the genes for it, you can’t develop it.

And even if you do have the genes,  that doesn’t guarantee you will get it. Scientists know that there’s  also an environmental component, but they’re still figuring  out exactly what that is. Where the research stands today, we don’t entirely know what causes  one person to develop celiac while somebody else doesn’t.

Contrary to what you might see on the  very much not peer-reviewed news source, TikTok, the environmental component  is not just “living in the US.” Some of the highest known rates of celiac disease are actually in European  countries like Finland and Sweden. Celiac disease is one reason you  might have to go gluten free. But there’s also its itchy cousin, the gluten related autoimmune condition  called dermatitis herpetiformis.

It causes a blistery, scaly  rash in response to gluten, and it shows up in about  10–25% of people with celiac. Some folks can have the rash without the  unpleasant gut symptoms of celiac disease, but often the gut is still being damaged. So those are some pretty  good reasons to avoid gluten.

But celiac disease and its related conditions are not the only medical  reasons people don’t eat gluten. There’s also gluten ataxia, an even less  common autoimmune reaction to gluten that affects the brain instead of the gut or skin. It can damage your cerebellum  and cause coordination problems.

So less, “I feel a little off after pasta” and more “this spaghetti has me feeling like I just got off a merry-go-round that was going way too fast.” These three autoimmune conditions  are very serious and as of right now, pretty much the only way to manage them is to eat a completely gluten free diet. Unfortunately for these  folks, there’s nothing anyone, even in Europe, can do to make gluten safe. So if that is you, please  do not eat gluten in Europe.

No matter how many influencers say they did. After all, if an influencer jumped off a bridge … you know what? They do that sometimes.

Just don’t deviate from what your doctor tells you if you have a literal autoimmune  reason to avoid gluten. But maybe your immune system isn’t  going through an identity crisis, confusing totally harmless  gluten for deadly pathogens. Maybe your immune system is  just throwing a hissy fit.

The full-on allergy kind, like what happens with a peanut allergy but this time with wheat. While wheat is one of the  most common dietary allergens, it is still quite rare for  your body to treat it that way, with wheat allergies affecting  less than 1% of adults. Many people with wheat allergies  are allergic to gluten, but that isn’t always the case.

You can be allergic to other  proteins in wheat instead. If your allergy is to a  component other than gluten, you might be able to eat non-wheat  grains like rye or barley. They have gluten, but that’s not your problem!

All you care about is whether or not  it has your specific doomsday allergen. So in many cases, foods that are  okay to eat with a wheat allergy aren’t an exact match for  foods that are gluten free. But avoiding gluten is usually a fairly  safe bet that you’re also avoiding wheat.

Whether gluten or wheat is the culprit, all the reasons for gluten avoidance so far have been pretty clear-cut immune responses. But not every reaction fits  neatly into those boxes. And that brings us to the murkiest medical reason you might not eat some of  the tastiest stuff on

Earth: non-celiac gluten sensitivity. This one’s the most common  among a lot of populations, but also the most controversial. It’s kind of a catch-all diagnosis for  people who feel off after eating gluten but don’t test positive for  celiac or wheat allergy. The million dollar question  is what is actually happening.

So, in blinded studies, where participants don’t know  whether they’re eating gluten or not, some people can reliably match  up when they have symptoms to when they’ve eaten gluten. But most people… can’t. That suggests that while some cases  of non-celiac gluten sensitivity are totally valid… others might just be blaming  gluten for crimes it didn’t commit.

A true diagnosis should involve  feeling better on a gluten-free diet, and then having symptoms come  back when gluten is reintroduced. But most cases are self-diagnosed, and not many people are lining up  to do a controlled gluten challenge, especially when they think gluten  is the thing making them feel … crummy. Even this isn’t just a U.

S. phenomenon, people react poorly to gluten all over the world. But some U. S. travelers swear they  feel fine eating it in Europe, so let’s break down what  might actually be going on.

But before that all science needs funding, even the videos we make to talk about science, so here’s an ad. Thanks to Brilliant for supporting this SciShow video! Brilliant is an interactive online learning platform that moves at your pace.

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No matter how fresh the focaccia, your immune system won’t get the  memo that it’s on vacation. But for everybody else, let’s explore some possible reasons  people think European gluten is “better.” The first theory that you may have seen  in your travel inspo deep dive on TikTok is that travel itself changes a lot of things. You’re probably sleeping more,  walking more, eating more slowly, and stressing less when you’re on vacation.

All of those things can help with better  digestion and less gut inflammation. That might help you feel better overall, but there’s no evidence that  those chill vibes or extra steps help you specifically digest  gluten more effectively. In fact, if you have a wheat  allergy but consume wheat, exercising immediately after  eating can make things worse, potentially even leading to anaphylaxis.

And if your symptoms are the  result of an autoimmune condition, maybe a lower stress level makes  them feel a little less severe, but they’re not going away. So, vacation vibes might  make you feel a bit better, but they aren’t the panacea for gluten woes. One of the other theories out  there is that it's the wheat itself that is different in Europe.

And this is true…to some extent. There are different types of wheat, and they vary in their protein content. Since gluten is the primary protein in wheat, that means they vary in their gluten content too.

Hard wheat, which is grown more often in the U. S., has more protein and more gluten than soft wheat, which is more commonly grown in Europe. And the environment where wheat is grown, things like temperature, rainfall, and drought, can also impact the amount of gluten it produces.

So in theory, a loaf of bread made  from soft wheat grown in France might have less gluten than one made  from hard wheat grown in North Dakota. But…and this is a big but…wheat  is a global commodity. Grains and flour are shipped all over the world.

So just because you’re in Paris  doesn’t mean your croissant came from 100% French wheat. It could be American wheat in a Parisian disguise. And again, if you’re dealing with an  immune issue like celiac or wheat allergy, the wheat source doesn’t matter.

Your body’s going to launch a  fight against an American foe or a French foe with the same vigor. So this might be more of a consideration for people with non-celiac gluten sensitivity. But it’s also possible that you could  be eating American wheat in France and still feel better than if  you were eating it in the US just because you think it's European.

Yes, gluten placeboes are real. And their evil twins, gluten nocebos, are too. In a 2023 publication, people who were expecting to eat  gluten experienced worse symptoms than those who ate the same amount  of gluten but weren’t expecting to.

Even just the idea of gluten can  make perceived symptoms worse. That’s a nocebo effect. So if you’re on vacation and believe  the gluten is “better” in Europe, that belief might actually lead to fewer symptoms.

A placebo effect in action. Which is kind of wild, but, hey whatever works. Again, only if it works.

This only applies to folks with sensitivities. Celiac disease won’t placebo away. Now, if you’re watching this video  before your European adventure, we might have burst your placebo bubble a bit.

But there’s still a chance  that a controversial chemical would make a difference for you. I’m talking about the pesticide, glyphosate. Glyphosate is the active ingredient  in the original recipe for Roundup which is used to kill weeds and, in some cases, to dry out wheat crops before harvest.

This use of glyphosate is way  higher in the U. S. than in Europe. Glyphosate is not good for  human cells in a lot of ways.

And while the main pathway it targets  for plant killing is specific to plants, so humans don’t have it… a lot of bacteria do. Including the ones living in your gut. So the theory goes: exposure to glyphosate  might mess with your gut microbiome, which then can disrupt the delicate  balance of microbes in your gut and cause inflammation or other symptoms.

Glyphosate has been shown to cause changes in the gut microbiome of a whole bunch of animals, including mice, rats,  honeybees, and even earthworms. And in mice, researchers have  been able to make the connection between glyphosate exposure,  changes in gut microbes, and increases in gut inflammation. But before we get ahead of  ourselves, this is not human data.

It suggests that similar things  could very well be happening in your gut microbiome, but we just don’t know for sure  yet how it works in people. It's an active area of research, and it’s entirely possible  that glyphosate exposure could be a piece of the  gluten-free pie for some people. But these differences may also be stemming from the way that wheat is processed.

The way wheat is turned into bread  or pasta can make a huge difference in how people respond to it. One factor here is fermentation time. Traditional sourdough and  other long-fermentation breads take a while for yeasts and  bacteria to break down sugars, including a group called fructans.

If those fructans aren’t fermented in the bread, they can be fermented in your gut, turning your intestines into a tiny bioreactor with some unpleasant byproducts. People might assume these  symptoms are due to gluten, when the gluten is just an innocent bystander. European bread tends to have  longer fermentation times, while the U.

S. has leaned  toward speedier production, so you might end up with fewer  gastro problems in Europe. In reality, European bread might be  easier to digest for some people… but not because of gluten. It’s the sugars.

Which means if your immune system  just hates gluten specifically, longer fermentation won’t help. Your tastebuds and your gut  microbes might love sourdough, but your immune system will  still say “absolutely not”. So if you find yourself  happily eating a crepe in Paris but not in Pittsburg, gluten might not be entirely to blame.

The real magic could be in the  fermentation, lower levels of glyphosate, or maybe just your steadfast belief  that everything is better in Europe. But if you have a wheat allergy or  an autoimmune reaction to gluten, like celiac disease, whatever you find in Europe will treat your body the same way as the stuff in the U. S.

Which means you’re stuck with the  gluten-free options, even in Europe. But rumor has it that food’s also better  than what we offer here in the US. On second thought, maybe I  will book that European trip… [ outro ]