Betty Crocker's gluten-free Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix

[Celtic Queen]

I was craving some chocolate chip cookies Wednesday night so I made a batch of the Betty Crocker gluten-free Chocolate Chip Cookies. I woke up the next morning and the area underneath my eye was swollen. I figured it was from something I ate. The only new items I had that day were the cookies and some Progresso gluten-free corn chowder.

So last night I decided to try the cookies again and see if I got the same reaction. Within an hour, my eyes started swelling up and itching. Thank God Benadryl doesn't have gluten in it.

My guess is that I'm having a reaction to something in the mix. Here are the ingredients: rice flour, semi-sweet chocolate chips (sugar, chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla), brown sugar, sugar, potato starch, potato flour, leavening (baking soda, sodium acid pyrophosphate, monocalcium phosphate), xantham gum, salt.

I've never noticed having any problems with rice, soy, or potatoes before. Is there a big difference between rice and rice flour? Could I react to one not to the other? Same with potatoes and potato flour or potato starch?

I don't think there was any cc with gluten because I have a totally different reaction to gluten. I also made a point to put foil in the cookie sheets before putting the dough on there. Anyone else have a similar reaction and can point in the direction of what I need to avoid? I really hate this because the cookies weren't bad for gluten-free.

[sa1937]

I've used it without a problem. You may be reacting to one of the ingredients. I'm pretty sure the Progresso corn chowder has milk in it (I don't have any on hand to check the label). Do you react to dairy? You're pretty new yet to eating gluten-free so it may be difficult to figure out as our bodies get pretty wonky at times.

[Celtic Queen]

I haven't had any problems with dairy in the past, but I do try to limit how much of it I eat because of my sinuses. I didn't have any of the soup on Thursday, so that's why I'm wondering if it might be the cookies.

My body is definitely wonky right now, for sure. When I started going gluten free during the summer, it was easy and and I had no problems with any of the gluten-free food I ate. I ate some gluten for a while and now that I'm back to gluten free, I'm having all sorts of issues that I never had before. I guess I'll just stay away from all the processed gluten-free stuff for a while until I get a chance to heal.

[sa1937]

It seems we become even more sensitive to lots of things after being gluten-free for awhile. And it's difficult to figure out.

[ravenwoodglass]

The Progresso soup also likely has soy in it. That can also be an issue for some of us.

[Michelle1234]

If you are looking for a GREAT gluten free cookie mix I highly recommend Authentic Foods Chocolate Chunk Cookie Mix. I liked it much better than the Betty Crocker one. However for cakes and brownies I really like the Betty Crocker mixes.

Open Original Shared Link

Good luck finding your hidden irritant.

Michelle

[T.H.]

Bad news is that for an allergic reaction, you can be totally fine one day and start reacting allergically the next, so even if all the foods have been fine, doesn't mean they are fine now. :-(

Usually the easiest way to try and figure it out is to find these ingredients alone and try them out.

A couple facts that might help eliminate or narrow down -

Xanthan gum is corn based, but it's highly processed so there's hardly any protein left. It's unlikely you had a corn reaction to this little, as you'd be reacting to everything if you reacted with this noticeable a reaction. Corn is just all over the place.

With the sugar, you may want to find out what the source for the sugar it is. There is sugar cane sugar and beet sugar, most commonly, although I think there's something else that can also be used. All can be called 'sugar.' It could be possible that the source for this sugar is one that you have an issue with. However, processed sugar tends to have less than 3 ppm of sugar protein left, so you'd be pretty sensitive if it were this.

Good luck tracking this down!

[Celtic Queen]

Thanks for the help everyone. I think I'm just going to steer clear of all grains, as well as corn and soy, for a while until my system calms down and then try adding back in gluten-free processed foods again. I've had 3 crazy, different reactions in the past month - 2 pretty severe ones. I guess my body still has some major healing to do.