Across the country, Americans have begun realizing they have a gluten sensitivity — but other countries don’t have the same issue. And according to Christian homesteader Michelle Visser, it’s not the fault of bread, but rather, how it’s made in America.

“Talking about other countries, back when we were adding into our flour and enriching it, other countries didn’t do that. In fact, in Italy, they had a pellagra outbreak around the same time that we were dealing with it here, but they responded completely different in little towns in Italy,” Visser tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey.

“They literally built communal ovens, bread ovens, and they encouraged them to use good grains, which had not gone through the green revolution of our country … and make whole wheat bread,” she explains.

“They knew that it was related to folate, and they knew it was dietary, and they said, ‘What can we do? We have in these small towns a lot of poor people who can’t necessarily afford good food. So one thing is, let’s at least give them the equipment to make the bread,’” she continues.

And the result of this, Visser explains, was wiping out pellagra — which was attributed to spoiled bread and polenta.

“So do you think gluten is unfairly demonized?” Stuckey asks.

“I think it is,” Visser says, using Norman Borlaug, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, as an example of being focused on the wrong issue when it comes to gluten.

“He had figured out how to manipulate wheat to give it a higher yield and to just simply grow more wheat for your buck. And while there’s definite advantages to understanding plant science, unfortunately, every time that we genetically change or we breed certain characteristics into any of our food, we are losing some nutrition,” she tells Stuckey.

“When they started milling it with the steel mills, they went from 20 barrels of flour a day to 500 barrels of flour a day with no extra energy, no extra expense. So there’s definitely money involved in the whole story is what I’m saying,” she explains.

“This bread that has been stripped of the good stuff, inserted with the synthetic stuff, that is maybe what’s causing the problems, especially in America,” Stuckey comments, surprised.

“Yeah,” Vasser confirms, noting that we’ve also added more protein into modern-day wheat, which has created a “franken-wheat.”

And then on top of what already is “franken-wheat,” wheat manufacturers have begun using pesticides and herbicides.

“If you are not buying organic flour, glyphosate is in trace amounts in your flour. It’s just, it’s there … if we are exposing our gut to glyphosate, we are killing the good bacteria. We’ve had gut problems in this country for many decades … and I think a lot of it has to do with this glyphosate in our flour.”

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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A family in Toledo, Ohio, got a most unwelcome visitor Saturday afternoon — a male they didn’t know who allegedly opened their front door and announced to a young daughter that he was a police officer.

“This guy came through the back alley, came to the front door, and he was trying to open the entrance,” Steven Aranda told WTVG-TV of the frightening encounter. “And my little daughter said, ‘What are you doing?’ She said, ‘You don’t belong here,’ and then he said he was a Toledo cop.”

‘I threw him down on the ground — slammed him on the concrete and beat him up.’

Charging documents indicated that Parker Jackson, 33, claimed he was a police officer and needed to check on the children in the home, the station said.

Aranda told WTVG Jackson didn’t look like a police officer, and a Toledo Police report Blaze News obtained indicated that Jackson provided no identification backing up his claim that he was a cop.

The station said Aranda was concerned about protecting his children and took matters into his own hands.

‘I snatched his a*s up, and I threw him down on the ground — slammed him on the concrete and beat him up,” Aranda told WTVG. “I pinned him down until the cops got here.”

Indeed, Jackson’s arrest photo shows him with a bloody, swollen lip and a cut above his eye.

The police report also said Jackson was showing “visible symptoms of intoxication” by the time officers arrived. In fact, the report added that Jackson appeared to have been carrying several opened and unopened cans of Milwaukee’s Best Ice beer at the time of his arrest. The report also said Jackson acknowledged opening the home’s front door and claiming to be a police officer.

RELATED: Dad tells cops he caught a rideshare driver sexually assaulting his daughter. So he did what dads do.

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Jackson pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated trespassing, inducing panic, and impersonating a police officer, WTVG reported, adding that a judge ordered Jackson to stay away from the family and set his bond at $1,500.

Aranda told the station his four children were shaken by the incident.

“The kids were kind of scared a little bit ’cause, you know, they ain’t been playing outside now in the past few days because you can’t trust nobody no more,” he noted to WTVG. “Watch out for your kids where they play at and their surroundings.”

You can watch the video of Aranda’s interview with WTVG here.

Jackson on Friday was still behind bars at Lucas County Jail, officials told Blaze News.

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On most days, the creek that runs behind our home in Montana looks like something out of a painting. The water tumbles over slick stones, swirls beneath the wooden bridge, and flashes like glass in the sunlight as it winds through the trees.

On hot afternoons, I take off my boots and stand in it awhile, letting the cold mountain water swirl around my feet. Even in August, it stays clear and shockingly cold — refreshing on hot, dusty feet. It looks so pure and inviting that you’d think you could cup your hands and drink from it.

The world’s water might soothe for a moment, but it can’t sustain. Only Christ, the living water, can cleanse, restore, and refresh a parched heart.

Yet I know better.

While helping a rancher move some cattle across the property, a few of them wandered down into that same creek. They lingered there, swishing tails and doing what cows do. The water still looked clear from a distance, but you certainly wouldn’t drink from it. Even a Supreme Court justice wouldn’t need a biologist to figure that out.

The water in that creek started high in the mountains, clean and cold. It was once pure, but animals do what animals do. People, though, take it further. We pollute on purpose. That’s not instinct; that’s sin.

We talk about free will, and we have it. But left to ourselves, we use it to wreck what was good. The culture isn’t just wandering into the water; it’s content to poison it, and sinners seem to care less about a polluted stream than cows do.

Downstream from belief

We’ve all heard that politics flows downstream from culture. But if you trace that current far enough, you’ll find that culture flows downstream from belief. Whatever people worship, they eventually legislate into law.

Today, we have ceased worshipping God. Instead, we bow before slogans, systems, and grievances that mollify us rather than giving worship to the one to whom it is due. From a distance, it all looks good — flowing with energy, language, and even a sense of virtue. But somewhere upstream, something has wandered into the water — or been poured into it.

Too often, the church is wading downstream, cup in hand, trying to stay “relevant” while drinking what has already been polluted. The poison is sin itself, the moral waste of self-worship that seeps in until it becomes part of the current.

When the church starts drinking downstream, the songs continue, the sermons sound familiar, and the branding shines. But the taste changes. Conviction weakens, holiness becomes optional, and relevance becomes everything. We echo the world’s vocabulary of identity and justice without the foundation of repentance and redemption. The message gets muddied, and we don’t even notice the shift.

And when that happens, the thirstiest suffer first. Those are the ones who come to church desperate for something real.

What really sticks

I’ve spent 40 years as a caregiver, and I’ve learned what real thirst feels like. When you’ve poured yourself out for years, almost any water looks good. You pray for strength, for truth, for something steady, and too often what comes back sounds like marketing. You sit in church and hear, “Claim your victory,” “Speak life,” or, “Step into your blessing,” and you wonder if anyone sees the wreckage you live with. Then, from another pulpit, you hear, “God understands,” “It’s not that bad,” or, “Everyone struggles.”

It sounds compassionate, but it isn’t. It’s corrosion.

The first slick of contamination began with the serpent questioning the Word of God, and all too many pulpits echo that same hiss today. They downplay sin, soften the edges, and serve up messages that keep people comfortable yet captive. They offer sympathy instead of repentance. That’s not grace; that’s decay.

Ornate and large pulpits don’t necessarily mean clean water. Visibility isn’t the same as vision. The purity of the message isn’t measured by the size of the platform of the one delivering it but by how faithfully it points upstream to Christ Himself.

Truth, the real kind, usually starts with one hard word: repent. It’s upstream, and it’s not easy to get there. But that’s where the water runs clean. Downstream, you’ll only find a little contamination, a little compromise, a little manure, and just enough to make you sick.

RELATED: Scripture or slogans — you have to choose

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I’ve tested the various platitudes and slogans in the emergency room, ICU, and dark watches of the night more times than I can count. None of them hold up.

Here’s what does.

Only one water stays pure no matter who steps in it. It’s the same water that met a Samaritan woman at a well. It’s the same water Isaiah promised when he wrote, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” That’s the invitation — not just to the church, but to every soul that’s dry and staggering: Walk upstream.

Go upstream

When we drink deeply from that pure spring, holiness stops feeling like a burden and starts feeling like oxygen. It gives clarity instead of confusion, courage instead of compromise.

That’s the call to the church and to every weary heart. Don’t drink what the world has trampled. Don’t settle for water that only looks clean from a distance. Polluted streams can’t quench the thirst of thirsty people.

The world’s water might soothe for a moment, even cool our weary feet, but it can’t sustain us. Only Christ, the living water, can cleanse, restore, and refresh a parched heart.

So go upstream. The source is still pure, and it’s still flowing.

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