Gluten contamination
Buckwheat is grown in Russia, China and North America and can be contaminated with grains, such as barley, unless rigorously controlled. As buckwheat is not related to wheat it can be used as an ingredient in gluten-free products because it does not contain gluten. It is used in a similar manner to wheat to create flour that is used in bread and pasta for consumers wishing to avoid gluten. It can be difficult to analyse to ensure levels are <20ppm gluten using ELISA based test kits. A recent Canadian publication reports a comparison of gluten recovery in gluten-incurred buckwheat flour using different commercial kits. Reference materials of buckwheat containing 0, 20, 100 and 1000 ppm gluten were created and tested by five ELISA test kits. The kits included two based on the R5 Mendez ELISA, which is the specified method for gluten analysis by Codex Alimentarius. It also included the Gluten-Check™ ELISA kit produced by Bio-Check (UK). The authors’ findings were that the Gluten-Check™ kit was the only kit to detect gluten accurately at all levels. It had the best recoveries in terms of accuracy and dispersion, a finding consistent with an earlier report.