>A lot of the behaviours associated with the autistic continuum are (in a subset of people) ameliorated to some extent if gluten is removed from the diet.<

Ooooh, hob, you're losing me here, fascinating though this is.

I do know a bit about gluten, especially it's extraction from wheat flour and its use as a culinary item in the Far East. In fact, gluten-based products are still a principal ingredient in the (vegetarian) diet of Buddhist monks and used as a substitute for animal protein.* Up until recently Canadian-grown wheat was imported to the Far East because of it's high gluten content. It's quite an interesting and an easy procedure to extract gluten from wheat (leaving behind a starch residue) and I'm told at the end of the Pacific War American GI's were surprised to see Japanese children using gluten (which they'd extracted themselves) as a chewing gum substitute :-)

* I mention this because of the altered states of mind Buddhist monks enter into during meditation.