Pac

Sorry, just had to mention that this comment "I also react to ovens that are normally used for gluten baking. Not everyone here does, but there are many that do--including my boyfriend" is not substantiated.  (No medical or scientific articles to back that up.)

It's been questioned before.  No offense to the OP, she's given me good advice before, but I personally do not agree with the oven advice.  I'm very sure it it irrevelant.  

I react to food from shared oven too. It was the only intolerance I discovered while keeping a food diary, only at that time I brushed it off as total nonsence.

Unfortunately my body don't need any scientific evidence to get sick. It even goes further than that and gets violently ill from grain products that are scientifically proven harmless to celiacs.

I'm sure the oven advice is irrelevant to most celiacs, but not all of them and unless you try it you cannot know which of the group you belong to.

You were raised following a diet of some type that restricted a certain type of food.  

The food that was restricted during your childhood, etc. is causing you problems when you eat it.

I'm not sure that we can say that it is a result of a true intolerance towards that food or that it is your body's response to a new food that is causing a problem.

I don't agree.

Gluten-free diet is not restricting you from any type of food, it only restricts you from eating three specific grains. You still eat bread or any other type of food, you still eat other grains and seeds with similar nutritional properties.

In this case, gluten wasn't any new food for the body (eating small amounts of gluten is enough to make the body familiar with it), plus the amounts that caused problems were very small (quite a few soy sauces made with wheat don't even contain detectable levels of gluten). Imho, it is much more probable that the reaction was caused by intolerance of some kind rather than a normal reaction to food that is not eaten regularly.



If in doubt, I don't see anything bad about eating gluten and see what happens. Either you get sick and realize it is causing you problems, or you won't, in which case you should still consider having the blood tests done.

Mothers of very young Celiacs should also use gluten free hygeine products.  Cross contamination from skin lotions and such, is too much of a risk.

Not just mothers. If you wash your hands with gluten-containing soap before making your meal, you have little chance of eating gluten-free. It depends on your level of sensitivity if you will react to such trace amounts of gluten or not.

I do make my own flours too. That's the only way I am able to eat any baked goods. I'm allergic to rice and to almonds, millet is too dificult to sort and has lots of gluten-grains in it. Buckwheat is quite easy to sort and make great flour for both bread and sweet cookies or ginger bread. I make garbanzo flour and white bean flour - wash them, then soak for 12 hours, dry and grind. Mungo beans can be ground quite easy too. Quinoa makes great flour to add to pizza dough or small pastry, but is difficult to sort and can't be washed quite well if there's any possibility of cc. I do buy tapioka starch, seems like that one has very little contamination. You can use boiled mashed potatoes to add better texture to baked goods. For sweet cakes, I use poppy seed, hazelnuts, coconut (from whole fresh coconuts), apples, bananas, carrot, pinnapple. For bread, I now tried the simplest recipe ever - mix buckwheat flour with salt and buttermilk (with live lactobacilli), leave for about 14 hrs at 27-37°C, then bake at 180°C for 30-40mins. It might work with sourkraut water too, didn't try that yet, the buttermilk one tastes like rye bread but better.
It's a lots of work to make your own flours, but my house need to be gluten-free and now almost rice-free, so I need to have some baked goods for the gluten-eaters. Also I make birthday cakes for all birthdays in our family - everyone is asking weeks in advance if I gonna make that cake again.   I'd like to try something else, but I guess I'll have to wait untill they are fed up with the first one.

Beside making my own flours, I also limit proccessed food to bare minimum like real tea, coffee, cocoa, (pure sea) salt, sugar, butter, sourcream, oil, baking soda. I buy whole spices, wash them and grind them myself, grow my own herbs, or use just stuff that can be washed and peeled like garlic and ginger. No condiments like mustard or ketchup for me. Fish sauce is the only thing I use, not even tamari sauce as I try to avoid soy completely for a while. I make my own chocolate, tostadas, potato chips, for travelling I dry some meat and apples. I wash everything that can be washed and dry it again if needed (like nuts and dried cranberries for trail-mix).

It is hard, especialy at first or when I get glutened, but it is well worth it.

I doubt this has anything to do with gluten. Unexplained fainting is definitely something to get checked out.

richard

I passed out many time pre-gluten-free, mostly after breakfast. Even now it is one of the telltale signs there was too much gluten in my food. So from my point of view, it is quite possible it was gluten. My family has a history of low blood pressure so "unexplained fainting" was always explained as low blood pressure, no need to go to the ER. (I sometimes wonder how would things be in my life if at least once my parents took me to the ER when I fainted or when I got so sick after breakfast that I had to lie down in bed and sleep it off instead of going to school.)

You would expect the same contamination in everything we eat then.  There's no reason to assume it only happens in wheat.

exactly, other crops are grown the same "traditional" way. I bet there are people who do get migraines from all the poison in food, but those won't get relief from just gluten-free diet alone.

As for the migraines, I do cross-react to rice, including rice flour or vapour from boiling rice/rice pasta. On the other side I'm pretty sure barley makes me "glutened" but doesn't cause migraines. (the only official diagnose I have is allergy to gluten/gliadins)

I need to have a gluten-free house and I was collecting all the bills for past 4 months to get an idea how much more we spend on food because of it. It seems like we spend the same or even a little bit less than when all 4 of us ate gluten at home. It can be either a mistake or a byproduct of being more aware of what we are buying and how much it costs. I started a detailed financial diary to get more reliable results - no evidence of extra costs so far, only that we are spending 1/4 of our food budget on dairy. (and I'm pretty sure we are eating less cheeses and yogurts than before   )

There's many ways to save money on gluten-free foods, even if you buy only good-quality fresh food. No matter how sensitive you are, there's no need for all family members to eat 100% gluten-free at home. You can still buy food labeled "may contain wheat" or containing barley malt for them if the gluten-free alternative is too expensive. Don't buy specialty products and flour mixes, focus on 'traditional' naturaly gluten-free food instead. Home-made gluten-free bread and pizza cost only a little more than regular bread in the shop if you use cheap flours. Buy shelf-stable goods like flours, cereals or spices in bulk, it saves you time as well as money. Plan your meals and use what you have at home first, don't buy perishables on sale if you're not sure you will eat them before they get bad. (I don't strictly plan my meals ahead, instead, I go to the shop to see what they have and plan meals while shopping.) Eat seasonaly and localy, this way you eat better quality too. Cook and especialy bake more things at once to save time and electricity - Baking fish and potatoes for dinner in the oven? Bread and extra pizza crusts can be made there at the same time, then just lower the temperature and put some cake in.

Having a completely gluten-free house makes many things a lot easier. Just the time alone you save on cooking and avoiding cc is worth it. You don't need to be constantly aware of what you are touching, if you are using the right fork or spoon, or if it's safe to kiss your husband. When you feel constantly sick and can't find any reason why, knowing that cc at home is almost impossible helps tremendously, especialy when you know some family members are notoriously unable to follow simple rules like not using your butter or cutting cheese with a clean knife.

Wish I wasn't allergic to almonds... chocolate cake sounds good!!

As a chocolate-lover allergic to almonds, I totally agree.  

Can you eat other nuts? You can substitute almonds with hazel nuts, walnuts or whatever is cheapest where you live - like poppy seed.

My boyfriend is eating gluten-free with me and I've noticed he avoids gluten like beer at a party, etc. more and more, even outside home. (He didn't do that at the very beginning.) Today he even returned some cookies back to the shelf saying they make him sick. He's admitted once (very reluctantly) that he feels a little better on gluten-free diet, but lets suppose he's not gluten-intolerant. Some of the articles I've read reported gluten being slightly harmful even to healthy non-celiacs and many non-research articles talk about grains not being as healthy as people like to think, so I'm wondering - does eating gluten-free make healthy people less tolerant to wheat and its relatives?

I disagree, at least as far as my own system is concerned. I've had several reactions that were tied back to caramel coloring.

Same for me. I avoid all sugars/starches and all their derivates unless their origin is clearly stated on the label. "Better safe than sorry" is my motto when it comes to eating processed food. For the same reasons I avoid vinegars - I don't believe white vinegar is any safer than grain vodka or whisky (both make me sick).

But as for the original question, I wouldn't worry about caramel colour if it's labelled gluten-free.

I can't say I'm obese, but one of the effects of undiagnosed celiac disease in me was gaining weight - to my 105lb I added about 25lb fat while losing muscle and not able to reverse this process, which was very unusual. Now after less then 6 months on gluten-free diet I'm still overweight but it gets better as my body recovers and fights off other health problems triggered by celiac disease.

To quote the statistics, about 20% diagnosed celiacs (European and North American) are obese or overweight. My guess is the percentage is even higher among undiagnosed celiacs since, despite the evidence, most doctors still laugh at the idea of obese celiac.