Is it Important to ONLY eat Certified gluten free?

[Scott Adams]

@MisterSeth,  Can I ask which chocolate bars you are referring to here?

[MisterSeth]

21 hours ago, Scott Adams said:

@MisterSeth,  Can I ask which chocolate bars you are referring to here?

walmart "great value" chocolate. some of them have "may contain barley". I was a little shaky about hershey, nestle, cadbury etc until I read that, I think barley is considered a common allergen in canada now.

[Beverage]

I got badly glutened one time on Amy's gluten free lasagna.  Now I can't even look at any Amy's product without turning green.  I have only tried a few Saffron Road frozen items, and had no problems.  No problem with Udi's, I just don't like the taste.

Certified gluten free is safest, so if I am going to get a frozen item like that, then I try for certified.  I bought a bunch of Pyrex glass freezer containers and often when I made a good dinner, I'll make extra and make up a little frozen dinner that I can just pop in the microwave or oven for when I don't have time or energy to cook.

[trents]

I've never had a problem with Amy's gluten-free frozen dinner products. Not sure if I have tried her lazagna, though. I mostly get the Asian dinners and sometimes the Mexican ones. I'm not a particularly sensitive celiac, however, so symptomatically I don't seem to react to minor CC. Thankfully, I don't have issues with soy and dairy like a lot of Celiacs.

[Scott Adams]

I will say that if the Amy's product was labelled gluten-free, it likely is, but certainly there have been products labeled gluten-free that did contain gluten, and companies do occasionally have manufacturing problems. 

Amy's is a local company here in Santa Rosa, CA and they won't advertise on Celiac.com, at least according to someone I spoke with around 10 years ago, because of the many negative posts about their products regarding the possibility that they could contain gluten. At that time I invited them to get more involved in our forum and respond to those negative claims, but so far they've never done that. In the same conversation the ad manager told me that if I were to delete the negative posts they would advertise. I told them that we don't delete posts. It is a mystery to me why they would not want to respond here to customer complaints, or take such a position about advertising. They are still welcome to respond.

[trents]

Scott,

I believe Amy's realizes that a lot of celiacs mistake being glutened with reactions to other ingredients or mistakenly identify a glutened event with a particular product when it was actually caused by gluten in another product they consumed around the same time. I'm guessing Amy's doesn't want to step into that quagmire on a forum, feeling they had more to lose than gain by doing so.

[Heather Cardwell]

On 3/16/2020 at 10:12 AM, Scott Adams said:

Newly diagnosed celiacs should keep a food diary and they may have to avoid other foods until they heal. Once they heal, which can take up to 2 years or more, they may be able to add back many foods that were causing them issues...except gluten of course.

Thank you for this information!  I'm newly diagnosed and once going gluten free I felt better for a couple of weeks but then most of my gut issues came back.  Getting discouraged. What do you recommend eating for the first year or so after diagnosis? 

[Scott Adams]

I would avoid processed foods and try to stick with whole foods that you personally prepare. I’d avoid refined sugar as well. I had issues with corn, milk, tomatoes and chicken eggs for about two years after my diagnosis, and would swear back then that I’d gotten cross contamination with gluten until I realized that I had additional, temporary food intolerance.

Itnterestingly, the foods that I was most sensitive to were foods that I was told by my allergist years earlier that I had high allergic reactions to and should only eat 1-2 a week, which I ignored. I should probably be following that advice.