I was enjoying reading that until I hit this line:

> The potatoes were swimming in their own gluten, released during the granule-making process

Whatever the potatoes were swimming in, it wasn't gluten.

By the way, the discussion of mashed potatoes reminds me of the excellent old "Smash" adverts on UK TV that featured martians/robots and a tagline of "For mash get Smash": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBRCZLzn5pM

(Smash was surprisingly popular in the 1970s but then UK convenience food was abysmal back then)