There was a time when almost all bread making involved lactic acid bacteria and a long fermentation time. Before modern yeasts were isolated, most bread was fermented with what we would now call a sourdough and it would have taken many hours to rise.

It is an intriguing possibility that, even if the wheats our forefathers cultivated contained the same potentially harmful gliadins as modern varieties, they were largely neutralised by the lactic acid bacteria that bakers couldn't help developing in their doughs.

Coeliac disease was identified only in the 1950’s. In its severest form, it is a seriously debilitating condition unless treated by total avoidance of gluten.

If such a disease had existed from our earliest wheat-eating days, is it not likely that sufferers would have fared rather badly in the evolutionary stakes?

Yet it seems that a good many of their genes have survived.

A more plausible explanation might be that it was a combination of changes in wheat itself and a move to fast fermentation using commercial yeast and little or no natural lactic acid bacteria that rendered bread indigestible to certain individuals who may, granted, have some genetic predisposition against gluten.