Newbie Has A Few Questions

[Redheadmom116]

Hello to all, I was diagnosed 8 days ago and I have been trying really hard to be 100% gluten free. Unfortunately, I have had a couple of mishaps and have paid for them. One happened just today when I had a wonderful dish of strawberries that I had picked over the summer and froze, some cool whip topping and a beautiful

[Takala]

What was in the shortcake?

If it were an allegedly gluten free "shortcake," then it may have contained an alternate gluten-free ingredient that does not agree with your system, that you don't know about yet. I can tolerate the baked goods I make, but some commercially prepared alleged gluten-free baked items hit me all wrong.

If it were a home made "shortcake," it may have been made in a pan that wasn't new and dedicated to gluten free ingredients only. Or it may have been made of something that was not really gluten free.

If it were a regular shortcake, you just discovered that the longer you are gluten free the less likely you can screw up deliberately and not pay for it, depending on overall sensitivity.

I don't know why some foods hit one harder than others, but I agree. I'm less sensitive than a lot of people, and if I had to chose between several items that I knew contained gluten, I would avoid a wheat based modified food starch suspended in a liquid or oil first above others. That stuff just kills me. Here in the US, sometimes it's made of corn, and labeled as such. Othertimes it's not.

Maltodextrin in the United States is supposed to be safe because it is supposedly made of corn here. Of course, if you react to corn anyway, this doesn't do you any good. Maltodextrin in other parts of the world can be made of who knows what, usually malted barley. I don't quite trust labeling here in the United States to eat the stuff very often, I try to avoid it because there is no way that one can tell for certainly what the country of origin is on most of these sub- ingredients and now a lot of the ingredients in food manufacturing may be sourced from China. The Chinese, from what I have studied during the last pet food recall in 2007, when tainted gluten was deliberately imported as human food grade to try to thwart the FDA inspections, then used in cat and dog foods, tend to call wheat derived products as "corn" on the wholesalers' sites. This is also done in Australia and some parts of Europe.

Dextrose is a form of sweetener that is made from grain, frequently used in things like jelly, and when it's European, it's made from wheat. So unless one knows what the country of origin is, and contacts the manufacturer to see what it is made of or where they got it from, it may not be gluten free.

I don't do manufactured salad dressings anymore, after I started just using olive oil and apple or balsamic vinegar on salads with a pinch of salt and sweetener, or a squeeze of lemon and oil, I thought it tasted so much better than commercial dressing why bother with the risk. I keep cruett bottles at home filled with oil and vinegars for fast sprinkling or fast mixing it up in a cup with other ingredients, and when I go out I ask for the oil and vinegar set ups or oil and lemon. Then you have to still check the vinegars to see if it's okay, and avoid the malt vinegars. Heinz ketchup at this writing is safe, if you want to mix in some ketchup, and Best Foods real mayonaise, original plain, even has a gluten free on the label. Some mustards are safe. Soy sauce, in San- J wheat free tamari brand, doesn't have gluten, and teriyaki sauce is nothing more than sugar, soy sauce, orange juice, (use fresh) and a little oil.

Really, it's simple. Just take oil, vinegar, or lemon, add seasoning, mix in a cup or little dish, and there's your safe salad dressing, which will not have the dreadful modified food starch in it.

[happygirl]

Maltodextrin is gluten free - it just looks misleading.

[Takala]

I believe the jury is still out on that, as all of us have reacted at some point to a listed ingredient that was supposed to be perfectly safe. I don't go on what anything looks like, just my reaction to it in a specific product, combined with research into what the item could possibly be made of, where it could have come from or traveled through, and what I have read.

https://www.celiac.com/articles/182/1/Unsaf...ents/Page1.html

[zero]

Malt is bad, dextrin can be bad but maltodextrin of the USA kind is ok. Welcome to being celiac. Try not to beat yourself up too much on making mistakes. The thing I noticed the most at the beginning was a change in the bowel as I was no longer getting all those whole grains anymore. I would also suggest the book "Celiac Disease: A Hidden Epidemic".

[RiceGuy]

Well, it could have been an unsafe ingredient in the dressing, or it might be that you are like many others here, who find they cannot tolerate certain other things. Dairy, soy, corn, eggs, nuts, and nightshades can all be troublesome, so you'll need to take note of top allergens and pretty much everything else, and learn what is safe for your body.

If you can give the name of the dressing, or list the ingredients, perhaps someone will be able to spot a possible culprit.

[Redheadmom116]

WATER, CREOLE MUSTARD (GROUND MUSTARD SEED, DISTILLED VINEGAR, SALT), CIDER VINEGAR, SUGAR, VEGETABLE OIL (SOYBEAN OIL AND/OR CANOLA OIL), MALTODEXTRIN, HONEY, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF: SALT, BUTTERMILK SOLIDS, SPICE, XANTHAN GUM, LEMON JUICE CONCENTRATE, ONION*, GARLIC*. *DRIED

These are the ingredients that are in the salad dressing that I had the other day. Any ideas what could have given me all the problems??

[happygirl]

Any ideas what could have given me all the problems??

The fact that you have been gluten free for such a short period of time - if you have Celiac, 8 days of the gluten free diet has not "fixed" you yet - healing takes time. Your digestive system can have trouble digesting anything at this point.

[happygirl]

I believe the jury is still out on that

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"It is prepared as a white powder or concentrated solution by partial hydrolysis of corn starch, potato starch, or rice starch"