My Food Pyramid

[chatycady]

I just got back from a celiac meeting and the dietician recommended I check out this website. I am unable to eat all grains and have been worried about missing some important vitamins/minerals in my diet. I follow the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.

I had to estabish an account and then will keep track of what I eat. It will tell me what vitamins I'm missing if any. It also tells me what foods I can add to get all the nutrients I need.

FYI.

Open Original Shared Link

[strawberrynin]

Open Original Shared Link

As a newbie, greatly appreciate this...I've been thinking a lot about what I must be missing.

[lbd]

There are no nutrients in grains that are not present in other whole foods. If you eat a balanced diet with good meat, fruits, nuts, and vegetables, you will get all the nutrition you need. On the other hand, if you eat a lot of replacement items for gluten products or junk food, you will not, but wouldn't have anyway. When I first went gluten-free, I carefully researched what vitamins, minerals, and nutrients were present in grains that I might be missing. There were none that were not available in even more abundance in some cases, in other whole foods. Never hurts to supplement with a good multivitamin in any case, since many store bought foods are nutrient poor.

The promotion by the grain industry about how grains are good for you is just that - pure advertisement.

Laurie

[AliB]

Chaty, what makes you think that you may be lacking in anything? Have you been tested and found to be lacking or are you just assuming it to be so because of the lack of grains?

Don't forget that a huge proportion of the World's population exist perfectly healthily without any grains whatsoever.

As Laurie said, grains don't contain anything that can't be found in many other foods, and often in better ways too.

Making a list of what you eat on its own will tell you little if anything about what you are lacking - unless you were existing on a diet of junk food. Even if any testing did throw up a lack anywhere, that could just as easily be attributed to straggly malabsorption issues than to a lack of actual nutrients.

If you are still following the SCD you will undoubtedly be getting a much better quality of nutrients in general than a lot of people simply because your diet revolves around good wholesome food that should be full of nutrients and not full of empty calories like junk.

Laurie's suggestion to take some supplementation may be helpful if necessary though because, unless you can get hold of mainly good quality organic produce grown in high-quality soil, much of the fruit and vegetables that are grown through intensive farming on poor quality soil is nowhere near as nutrient-rich.

Grains can supply B vitamins and things like iron, but then so can fish, meat, nuts, turkey, liver, lentils, avocado, beans, leafy green veg and well, most foods really. Any deficiency is more likely to be due to gut damage and malabsorption than to a lack of nutrition, although having said that, processing does radically reduce the amount available in any food, so even if you were eating gluten, white flour products would have much less than wholemeal which is why they have to supplement it. No chemically-derived supplement can substitute for the benefit of the real nutrients in the real food.

[chatycady]

There are no nutrients in grains that are not present in other whole foods. If you eat a balanced diet with good meat, fruits, nuts, and vegetables, you will get all the nutrition you need. On the other hand, if you eat a lot of replacement items for gluten products or junk food, you will not, but wouldn't have anyway. When I first went gluten-free, I carefully researched what vitamins, minerals, and nutrients were present in grains that I might be missing. There were none that were not available in even more abundance in some cases, in other whole foods. Never hurts to supplement with a good multivitamin in any case, since many store bought foods are nutrient poor.

The promotion by the grain industry about how grains are good for you is just that - pure advertisement.

Laurie

I agree with you! I don't eat any grains and was always worried that I might be deficient in B vitamins, but I"ve tracked what I eat and sure enough - no deficiencies! I could stand a little more potassium (don't do well with bananas) and less sodium. But I have all the rest of the bases covered.

Don't know how to lower sodium, when I don't eat anything processed. Don't know if I should worry about it. I ignore their recommendations - for grain. I just needed to know I was getting all the proper nutrients I need.

[chatycady]

Chaty, what makes you think that you may be lacking in anything? Have you been tested and found to be lacking or are you just assuming it to be so because of the lack of grains?

Don't forget that a huge proportion of the World's population exist perfectly healthily without any grains whatsoever.

As Laurie said, grains don't contain anything that can't be found in many other foods, and often in better ways too.

Making a list of what you eat on its own will tell you little if anything about what you are lacking - unless you were existing on a diet of junk food. Even if any testing did throw up a lack anywhere, that could just as easily be attributed to straggly malabsorption issues than to a lack of actual nutrients.

If you are still following the SCD you will undoubtedly be getting a much better quality of nutrients in general than a lot of people simply because your diet revolves around good wholesome food that should be full of nutrients and not full of empty calories like junk.

Laurie's suggestion to take some supplementation may be helpful if necessary though because, unless you can get hold of mainly good quality organic produce grown in high-quality soil, much of the fruit and vegetables that are grown through intensive farming on poor quality soil is nowhere near as nutrient-rich.

Grains can supply B vitamins and things like iron, but then so can fish, meat, nuts, turkey, liver, lentils, avocado, beans, leafy green veg and well, most foods really. Any deficiency is more likely to be due to gut damage and malabsorption than to a lack of nutrition, although having said that, processing does radically reduce the amount available in any food, so even if you were eating gluten, white flour products would have much less than wholemeal which is why they have to supplement it. No chemically-derived supplement can substitute for the benefit of the real nutrients in the real food.

Most of my life I've been deficient on something!!! Iron, B-12, Magnesium, Vitamin D. calcium. And there are a couple of dieticians at church who insists you can't have a good diet without grains! So I just needed to see with my own eyes I was ok. I can live without grain!

Thanks for asking.

[AliB]

These bods so love to scaremonger! They are so arrogant in their 'knowledge' that they are always convinced they know best.

If people needed grains in order to exist, how the heck are the Inuit still alive? And those on tropical islands on their diets of fish and fruit? And those in extreme hot and cold climes who can't grow grains? Duh!

Good sources of potassium are meat, fish and poultry, apricots, avocado, melon, kiwi, oranges, prunes, spinach and tomatoes.

Do you drink enough? Drinking a little more water may help to reduce your sodium levels, but what is 'normal' anyway?? Some drugs can affect electrolyte balances within the body too.

[chatycady]

I probably don't drink enough during the day, but wouldn't I be puffy if sodium were a problem? I will remember to drink more. I do snack on lots of fruit and don't really get thirsty. THanks for your reply. Always very encouraging!