All throughout her childhood, senior Ashton Edwards was told she looked anorexic.

What people didn’t see was the girl who was always hungry, who viewed her skinny as “disgusting,” and suffered severe stomach issues.

Edwards didn’t have an eating disorder; she has an autoimmune disorder called celiac disease. When people with celiac disease ingest gluten, their immune system launches an attack on the small intestine, which damages the villi, the small fingerlike lining of the organ. Without these projections, nutrients cannot be properly absorbed into the body.

“… When I would eat I wouldn’t gain any weight,” Edwards said. “I wasn’t absorbing any nutrients at all so I was really weak.”

According to the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness, 18 million Americans have non-celiac gluten sensitivity. That’s 6 times the amount of Americans who have celiac disease.

While Ashton’s disorder is hereditary, there may be an explanation, other than unfortunate genetics, for the recent increase in allergies and why so many others feel sick when they eat gluten or other food allergens.

Until the industrial revolution, wheat was harvested naturally for thousands of years. But as agricultural technology became more efficient and accessible, mechanized wheat harvests became the norm. Furthermore, researchers discovered how to maximize crops by genetically modifying them and using a generous dose of pesticides on them.

What most consumers don’t know is that the food industry basically reconstructs crop genes to produce mutant crop seeds and then proceeds to douse them in chemicals before offering to consumers.

After millions of years of consuming natural foods, the body is not adjusted to ingesting these inorganically-altered foods. Depending on the body’s level of rejection, consumers are left feeling sick or, in worse cases, develop an allergy.

The immediate solution to this problem may be to simply cut gluten out of the diet, but it’s really  the industrial flour made with modern wheat that needs to be avoided.

According to Dr. Joseph Murray, professor of medicine and consultant in gastroenterology and immunology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., there are differing levels of gluten sensitivity.

The first condition, gluten sensitivity or “celiac lite,” qualifies “a person who may or may not have antibodies in the blood characteristic of celiac disease, does not have the intestinal damage seen in celiac disease but does have symptoms including abdominal pain, bloating, gas and diarrhea and does benefit in terms of symptoms from following a gluten free diet.”

The second condition, non-celiac gluten sensitivity, categorizes people “who have the same symptoms of abdominal pain, bloating, gas and diarrhea, but do not have antibodies or the genetic predisposition for celiac disease.”

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are too new for any type of research to be completely conclusive. However, Dr. Farhang Khosh of Lawrence’s Natural Medical Care clinic stated they have been linked to the rise in food allergies and food sensitivities.

“So can anyone definitively say they’re harmful to us?” said Nancy O’Connor, the Director of Education and Outreach at The Merc.  “Probably not, yet. Can anybody say they’re definitively safe for us? Absolutely not.”

The unknowns surrounding the effects of GMOs makes them potentially harmful to consumers  yet the food industry is doing nothing to halt the production of them.

“Consumers have the rights to know what’s in their food and in the United States, genetically modified foods are not labeled,” O’Connor said. “… And Monsanto is spending millions of dollars fighting state initiatives that are requiring GMO labeling.”

While Monsanto, the GMO giant, is pushing to increase the amount of GMOs in the food industry, people like Edwards, suffering from either celiac disease or a less severe reaction to gluten, are hurting, and the inorganic agricultural practices are likely to blame.