Come On...balsamic Vinegar Too? I'm Eating Like A Rabbit.

[lucky97]

I'm already eating like a rabbit, so please give me your advice on this meal which could become one of my staples:

1. Raw spinach leaves

2. Craisins or raisins

3. Tomato or other fresh thing

4. Aged Balsamic Vinegar

4. Extra virgin Olive Oil

5. Maybe canned tuna or some other protein

6. hard sharp cheddar cheese I shred myself

Early on in my diagnosis and I'm getting really discouraged. I need to eat something for lunches, now I read somewhere on this forum I can only really be safe with Olive oil and lemon for salad dressing? WTF any flavor options???

DARNIT IF I'M GIVING UP MY ANNUAL CLAMBAKE even I can't have the beer or put it in the bake (which is a key ingredient for awesome clam broth).

[MelindaLee]

When I was first diagnosed tuna from the can bothered me. I don't know if it was the soy, or what. Now I can eat it, but it took a few months before it didn't make me sick. Otherwise everything on you list should be fine. Watch for cross contamination. You replaced the cutting board, right?

[psawyer]

Vinegar, except for malt vinegar (which will always be labeled as just that), is safe.

Oils are safe from a gluten perspective. Some people, including some celiacs, need to avoid some oils, such as soybean oil and peanut oil.

Most celiacs can use a number of salad dressings. Kraft will clearly disclose any gluten content. Most of their dressings are gluten-free. A small number aren't, but the gluten source is clearly disclosed in the ingredients.

[rosetapper23]

...and you can have the beer if you bring your own gluten-free brand. Redbridge is quite good and available at a lot of regular supermarkets and at BevMo. Bard's Dragon Tale is another gluten-free brand.

[Looking for answers]

Could it be the cheese giving you trouble? That would be my guess...

[Lisa]

Yup, good advise already...

It's not the end of the world. Use gluten free beer for your clam bake and continue with your traditions.

Until some healing can take place, all foods can be a bother, gluten or not. Also, as mentioned, dairy can mimic gluten symptoms, again until healing can take place. Most people can reintroduce it after a month or so.

Go light on the processed foods and dairy...and soon you'll join the world of the living. ...it's just around the corner.

[cassP]

every balsamic vinegar ive gotten has been safe-

i also have a Blue Cheese Yogurt salad dressing at home - i forgot the brand- but it's labeled gluten free.

ive had a honey mustard dressing that was gluten-free too- it gave me a little reaction- but thats because i have issues with fructose & high fructose corn syrup.

good luck

[lucky97]

All very good advice, fast too.

Thank you all, as I know you had to figure the same stuff out too at the beginning. I'm 45 and just found out with no known family history of celiac, been gluten-soaked my whole life. Who knew?

I should note no items on my salad list were giving me "problems," including soy or tuna. I had very few symptoms of celiac until the acute hepatitis attack this past September which landed me in the hospital for a week while they scanned me good, and even then it was difficult to connect the dots until I got the official diagnosis after the upper GI. I used to call it a "sour stomach" once in a great while after a good beer soaking, and infrequent bowel issues even after a colonoscopy. I'll spare you the details.

I'm going cut out the dairy like I did to get the liver going in the right direction again after the hepatitis, if it helps the intestines start to heal. I'm not having much processed food at all, almost none including no MSG. I know how to do that...I also have an appt. with a registered dietician through the Cleveland Clinic later this week.

Well I'm more comfortable with my salad decisions; I feel like Jack Lalanne, who is probably 97 now. He must have known something...

[sandsurfgirl]

When I was healing I went through a few periods where everything I ate bothered me. I had to cut dairy and soy for awhile. I put dairy back in at around 7 months on occasion and now I'm a year gluten free and I can eat it regularly with no problem. Soy is still a huge problem for me.

I got sick off canned chicken that had no offending ingredients in it and I never figured out why.

I've seen newbies on the board get really freaked out and think they were intolerant of everything. Just relax and see if it just goes away.

Try cutting dairy since it's so commonly a problem for us. The tips of the villi produce the lactase to digest dairy so many of us can't eat it until we are more healed.

Also I couldn't eat any complicated foods or meals for a few weeks. Try maybe eating lots of frequent meals but with only like 3 foods for a few days.

Dehydration and electrolyte imbalance is still a problem for me. I drink Gatorade almost daily to combat electrolyte problems and I have to keep up on my water. If I forget to drink enough water I get tired, and tummy problems, etc.

[Takala]

Balsamic vinegar is okay. Pure apple cider vinegar is okay.

Anonymous vinegar in a restaurant that the waitstaff cannot vouch for as to what it really is, which might be some sort of flavored vinegar and not the real stuff, is not okay, and that's when I ask for the lemon. In certain parts of the country malt vinegar is very popular as a table condiment for french fries in diners. When in doubt,.... don't. I've eaten sunflower oil coated craisins (why, oh, why do they ruin some of them with that garbage) and they have been Not Okay, probably because the sunflower oil was not specifically made to be un contaminated. I have had restaurants try to put those sugared nut chunks ("candied" ) on my salads and they can be made with some sort of grain coating, too, sometimes, nothing worse than biting down on one and actually tasting it have that extra flavor. Leave the bleeping pecans off the thing unless you promise to stop molesting them !

[Skylark]

I'm already eating like a rabbit, so please give me your advice on this meal which could become one of my staples:

1. Raw spinach leaves

2. Craisins or raisins

3. Tomato or other fresh thing

4. Aged Balsamic Vinegar

4. Extra virgin Olive Oil

5. Maybe canned tuna or some other protein

6. hard sharp cheddar cheese I shred myself

Early on in my diagnosis and I'm getting really discouraged. I need to eat something for lunches, now I read somewhere on this forum I can only really be safe with Olive oil and lemon for salad dressing? WTF any flavor options???

DARNIT IF I'M GIVING UP MY ANNUAL CLAMBAKE even I can't have the beer or put it in the bake (which is a key ingredient for awesome clam broth).

I'm confused. All the things on your list are gluten-free. Is this meal giving you trouble? I like eggs and mushrooms on spinach salads too, or some crumbled bacon (cook your own - Bacon Bits have gluten). I also take homemade soups for lunch, or frozen baked pasta made with rice penne.

Of course olive oil and lemon is safe. So is red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar. You can also add crushed herbs like oregano or some fresh pepper. There are a lot of other bottled salad dressings that don't contain any gluten. Hidden Valley and Kraft will always declare gluten ingredients so you just have to check the labels at the store.

As for your clambake, use Redbridge gluten-free beer.

[GlutenFreeManna]

Everyone has given great advice so far. I just want to add that when I was healing for the first few months I could not have eaten a salad like that. My intestines were really sensitive and I couldn't tolerate very many raw foods at once. Perhaps this is just the case for you as well? Even if this is a salad you have always eaten in the past without problems you may want to lay off for a few months until your intestines have healed better. Eat steamed/cooked veggies instead and lay off the nuts and dried fruit.

[T.H.]

If you're looking for some variety? Stir fries did great for my kids in the beg ginning.

We used either gluten free soy sauce, or coconut aminos (soy free soy sauce substitute. Tastes a hint sweeter).

Just get a veggie, saute it with a teeny bit of oil and garlic, and then add a few TB water and cook on high for a few minutes, and then add the soy sauce for the last minute or so. Eat it with rice.

We've done this with asparagus, bok choy, spinach, broccoli - lots of good veggies. Also, you can mix in a starch, cooking sherry or rice alcohol, and a liquid sweetener like honey or agave syrup, and make a pretty nice asian sauce.

And don't forget homemade soups! :-) Those are nice and easy, once you start looking around

[lucky97]

No the salad ingredients I listed at the top of this thread were not giving me problems, what I was saying was I've read some things that stated some brands of balsamic vinegar are NOT ok...and that some brands of canned tuna are NOT ok and I was looking for opinions on that or maybe some brands you folks use and know are gluten free...

...and while I'm at it, are all brands of soy milk gluten free? How about Giant Eagle's Nature's Basket organic soy milk? I've been thinking about switching to that to eliminate the dairy for awhile like has been recommended to me.

I'm still real early on in this and I'm finding a lot of conflicting information, mainly because people also seem to bring up other intolerance problems BESIDE the gluten. Are there any gluten-free products listings on this site by any chance? I've seen the giant eagle gluten-free products list (but no soy milk products listed on it which is puzzling because I've read that soy milk can be a gluten-free staple. See what I mean?)

[GlutenFreeManna]

Balsamic vinegar is a staple of my diet because I can't have soy in any form. I have not seen one with gluten, but just check the ingredients on the label of the one you use. I currently have Regina brand in my cabinet and it says "this product is free of gluten" on the label. I bought it some time ago however, so double check the lable if you go to buy that brand. I think the thing you are seeing about people not being able to eat some tuna brands also has to do with many people here being intolerant of soy. They put soy in the form of vegetable broth in most tuna. I've never seen tuna with gluten. Maybe in some of those fancy flavored tunas you could worry, but plain tuna should be fine. Just read the ingredients label. Bumblebee and Starkist usually just have "tuna, water, vegetable broth. Contains soy." as the ingredients. Their premium gold label tunas have just "tuna, water" listed for ingredeients. No gluten in there. As far as the soy milk goes, I don't use it so I can't help you with brands, but I drink almond milk and I know not all almond milk is gluten free. So you need to check the ingredients on the soy milk you buy to make sure there is nothing suspect in them. In the US, companies must label wheat, but they can hide barley (or rye) by calling them "natural flavors". Print out the list of unsafe ingredients and take it with you to the store: https://www.celiac.com/celiac-disease/forbidden-gluten-food-list-unsafe-ingredients-r182/

You may find several brands say they are gluten free right on the label, however.

It's better to get in the habit of always checking ingredients, even when you read that something is gluten free. Companies have been known to change their recipes from time to time and may add gluten to something that had no gluten ingredients before. So always double check, even when you have used something recently without any problems. I hope this helps!

[T.H.]

I'm still real early on in this and I'm finding a lot of conflicting information, mainly because people also seem to bring up other intolerance problems BESIDE the gluten.

It's going to be tricky at first, but based on my own experience, and many others, let me say this:

Many things CAN be gluten free, but pretty much anything can be contaminated by gluten somewhere along the line (harvesting, processing, packaging), depending on the brand. Usually it's in limited amounts that won't bother you, however. It will just take some time and a little trial and error for you to figure out what is safe for YOU: people have different levels of sensitivity. We all eventually figure it out.

Some gluten free/has gluten examples:

soy milk - some are gluten free, some aren't.

Rice milk - some are gluten free, but some are processed with barley water, so they aren't.

Vinegar - some vinegars are okay, some aren't.

oils - some are okay, but as an example? I had one make me ill because the company also processed their wheat germ oil on the same line.

I'd pretty much start off taking the list of gluten free foods that you find around the web and assume that's good. If you feel ill, however, look at the most likely culprit to eliminate first and see how it goes, and then just keep eliminating until you feel better, whether other people think it has enough gluten to get you or not.

Gluten free is just a legal term. There's still low levels of gluten in pretty much all of it. You'll probably be fine with that - most celiacs are. The important thing is just to trust yourself when you react, is I suppose the best way to put it. :-)