Certain gluten-free breads cause vomiting

[Joanie C]

My daughter vomits when she eats certain gluten-free baked goods and we can’t figure out what the source is. These brands cause sickness: Bob’s Red Mill, O’Doughs. These don’t: Udi’s, King Arthur, Pamela’s. We thought it was sorghum until today, when she had O’Doughs for the first time and there is no sorghum and she got sick. We are stumped. Please help!  Thank you. 

[cyclinglady]

Do any of these gluten-free products contain oats?  Soy?  

I use Pamela’s Flour because it does not include Xanthan Gum.  But I think the rest you mentioned all use Xanthan Gum.  So that might not be it.  

I personally do not do well with commercially produced gluten-free products.  I suggest avoiding them for a few weeks.  These products are very processed and often contain chemicals and preservatives which can be harsh on a celiac’s healing small intestine.  Plus, celiacs often have other food intolerances.

Do you have safe kitchen practices?  Might need to review those.  

I hope you figure it out!  

 

[trents]

Look for ingredients common to all the baked goods that are causing problems. Could this be a texture issue? How long does it take after consumption for the emesis to start?

And I always caution people in the gluten intolerant/celiac community not to assume that medical issues are necessarily related to problems with gluten. If you don't find answers where you start to look, look elsewhere. Something like you describe could have another medical basis and if it isn't resolved soon I would encourage you to get some GI testing done for your daughter.

[Betsy Bee]

She may have more than just antibodies to gluten. When I got off of gluten I found I was just as sick to other grains and reacted in the same way that I did to gluten. Cyrex Array #4 helped me figure out which other common ones were making me sick. Hopes that helps her. 

Edited December 27, 2019 by Betsy Bee

[A nonie moose]

I developed severe egg allergies along with the gluten intolerance, I found a lot of gluten free breads contain eggs to bind ingredients together. Hope you find the common denominator in the breads.

[Awol cast iron stomach]

To keep our home gluten-free my husband and children keep gluten-free breads on hand. As for myself I make my own baked goods (they eat them sometimes too) . I use Anthony's products and the premix I was able to add into my diet in 2019 was Pamela's all purpose baking product.

I have problems with gluten-free breads due to the following variables corn starch , corn dervatives, oats, xanthum gum,  after I first went gluten-free my GI could not handle rice bran so I still keep rice bran to a minimum. My body for the first 3 years liked minimal ingredients. I have added some more, but mostly stick to my minimal ingrediant whole foods style.

For the most part I make baked items from almond, tapioca, cassava, coconut flours.  I change the combo based on what I am making. I use the Pamela's blend as an added ingredients  for my daughter's waffles and bagels.

I hope you are able to find something that works for her. Often I swapped out bread for lettuce in the beginning of I wanted to have food in a "sandwich".

Best wishes

 

Edited December 31, 2019 by Awol cast iron stomach
Comma missing

[pweidema]

My daughter-in-law has a severe flax allergy that can cause vomiting. Many "healthy" grain products contain flax...

[Joanie C]

On 12/27/2019 at 2:13 PM, Betsy Bee said:

She may have more than just antibodies to gluten. When I got off of gluten I found I was just as sick to other grains and reacted in the same way that I did to gluten. Cyrex Array #4 helped me figure out which other common ones were making me sick. Hopes that helps her. 

Thanks a lot!  I didn't know about this test.  We'll definitely look into it.

[Joanie C]

On 12/26/2019 at 11:16 PM, cyclinglady said:

Do any of these gluten-free products contain oats?  Soy?  

I use Pamela’s Flour because it does not include Xanthan Gum.  But I think the rest you mentioned all use Xanthan Gum.  So that might not be it.  

I personally do not do well with commercially produced gluten-free products.  I suggest avoiding them for a few weeks.  These products are very processed and often contain chemicals and preservatives which can be harsh on a celiac’s healing small intestine.  Plus, celiacs often have other food intolerances.

Do you have safe kitchen practices?  Might need to review those.  

I hope you figure it out!  

 

Thank you!  This occurs primarily when eating out and eating at other people's houses.  They kindly provide gluten-free bread or pizza or pancakes and it doesn't work out.  It could be the kitchens.

I also wonder if it is a threshold reaction to xanthan gum or something else.  I will compile the list of ingredients you and others have suggested.  Thanks.

[Joanie C]

On 12/27/2019 at 1:56 PM, trents said:

Look for ingredients common to all the baked goods that are causing problems. Could this be a texture issue? How long does it take after consumption for the emesis to start?

And I always caution people in the gluten intolerant/celiac community not to assume that medical issues are necessarily related to problems with gluten. If you don't find answers where you start to look, look elsewhere. Something like you describe could have another medical basis and if it isn't resolved soon I would encourage you to get some GI testing done for your daughter.

Texture is a very interesting idea.  Would that affect the timing?  The reaction is pretty immediate.  Sometimes just a bite can cause her to start feeling nauseous.  Other times, she gets through a whole sandwich and then gets sick.  She throws up within 20 minutes max. 

Thanks for the recommendation to get checked on other issues. 

 

[trents]

It takes about two hours for food to leave the stomach and go into the small bowel. Speaking for myself, it is at that point when, if I have eaten gluten or any of the several other foods that give me problems, that I begin to experience nausea. I would think texture issues would have a more immediate effect. Does your daughter have problems swallowing pills? I guess where I'm headed with this is I wonder if she needs some kind of esophageal dilation procedure.

[knitty kitty]

In the early stages of thiamine deficiency and in children, vomiting is a symptom.  Thiamine is needed by the body to process carbohydrates into energy for our bodies.  

Those gluten free bread like products are not required to be enriched with vitamins.  Gluten containing breads are required by law to be enriched with vitamins that the processing of wheat, barley and rye removes.  

A person can lose their thiamine and start to become deficient in as little as nine days.  When you're sick, you have a higher metabolic need.  

Here's some more information

https://healthprep.com/fitness-nutrition/guide-symptoms-thiamine-deficiency/10/?utm_source=google&utm_campaign=1645539802&utm_medium=search&utm_term=thiamin deficiency&utm_content=72643788452

 

https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/vitamins/thiamin#deficiency

I'm not diagnosing.  I have personally experienced thiamine deficiency.  I'm type two diabetic and need more thiamine than was in my multivitamin.  When you're deficient, that's not enough.  Doctors, in my experience, don't recognize deficiency disease symptoms any more.  Please have your daughter checked for nutritional deficiencies.  

Best wishes!

 

 

[Zenith]

On ‎12‎/‎26‎/‎2019 at 11:08 PM, Joanie C said:

My daughter vomits when she eats certain gluten-free baked goods and we can’t figure out what the source is. These brands cause sickness: Bob’s Red Mill, O’Doughs. These don’t: Udi’s, King Arthur, Pamela’s. We thought it was sorghum until today, when she had O’Doughs for the first time and there is no sorghum and she got sick. We are stumped. Please help!  Thank you. 

I heard it could be xantham gum.  Also my mom ate some gluten free tortillas once and she said she got kinda sick. I don't know what brand. And another brand of gluten free bread I had bought, but I can't remember the brand made my stomach not feel so good. Then I noticed the store didn't sell it anymore. I do fine with Udis but not crazy about the taste. I get the raisin cinnamon. Luckys sold a decent brand too made in Canada but it went out of business here in FEB.   

[trents]

Unfortunately, the offending ingredient can be almost anything for different people. And I think it is also true that the gluten-free food industry probably uses a lot of ingredients that are not commonly found in mainline food manufacturing in order to come up with products that approximate that taste and texture of their mainline equivalents. So we can have this issue where we are subjecting our digestive and immune systems to strange things in order to avoid gluten; things our body's systems are not used to seeing and they have trouble breaking down and assimilating them.

[Fenrir]

In the brands listed above I would doubt it has to do with gluten content so the next thing to look at is what else is in gluten-free bread you could be allergic too.