gfp

Wow, this is very interesting...

I have no clue as to heritage... I am adopted. However...

I have an Irish temter, Czechoslovakian stubbornness. I have a roundish face, blue eyes, when I bleach my hair it has a red cast to it, so there is lots of natural red in it... I haven't a clue as to what my "natural color" is anymore... lol. I am short, and have stumpy legs, toes and fingers. My eyes also have a slight... very slight almond shape to them also.

The funny thing is Americans tend to consider themselves mixed up but the same can be said for thier forebearers. Apart from my height (5'10") and a half ... I look completely Scandanavian with blonde hair and blue eyes the exception being my nose! yet my mothers sister couldn't look more Jewish with olive skin, dark eyes and black hair and the same nose ... My ex-gluten-free from Uni was Irish and had 4 siblings... all extremely Celtic looking (and the youngest a celaic) except one who was dark skinned, blonde haired and brown eyes. In this case we actually know Im 1/8 part Jewish ...

The Spanish landed in Southern Ireland after the Armada and hence their is a large element of Spanish and the same goes for some of the isolated valies in Norway but the whole thing just gets lost, the Spanish were a mixture of pre-Roman celts, phonecians via carthage and moors not to mention Romans and greeks.

The Norwegians similarly kidnapped and interbred with most of Northern Europe in their viking phase.

The English are as mongrel as anyone... I should know ....

The bottom line is would you trust McDonalds who have been proven in court to have lied on official statements multiple times.

here is one example:

Open Original Shared Link

However the wording is what points inthe wrong direction for me

From the other thread

McDonald's always believed that the fries were gluten-free.

answered by

If they are so innocent why the hell were they sneaky about it! If all that happened was their distributor told them what was REALLY in the fries and they REALLY didnt know before this new law what was in them, then why on earth would they just quietly release this info on their web site....just makes them look like they are trying to hide something to me.

And in regards to my prior post.....I do not think I am entitled to go eat anything anywhere....If I didnt make it I can not trust it fully!

But if a restaurant wants to tell us things are safe....they damn well better be!

If a restaurant has a gluten-free menu or a list of their ingredients you want me to believe they are doing this because they really give a damn about me or my health....NO WAY....they do it for ONE reason......To try to get/save the business of people with allergies...and thats it!

All I can say is I would much rather have a restaurant tell me that they dont know what is in their food then tell me that its safe and have it not be!

Fromt he Offical McDo release...

In conjunction with the new Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act, our suppliers informed us

for the first time that hydrolyzed milk and hydrolyzed wheat are ingredients in the natural flavoring used in

the frying oil for the French fries and hash browns. Based on this new information, we updated nutrition

disclosures on these products on our website.

So before they were informed by their supplier they didn't ask... yet they labelled their product gluten-free....

This sounds like "lets not ask the wquestion then we are not responsible" to me or perhaps best summed up by as line from Independance Day "Two words Mr. President, plausible deniability" (or close )

Secondly they chose a specific test the "RIDASCREEN Gliadin ELISA test at a 3 parts per million level of

sensitivity."

The Ridascreen Gliadin test is a sandwich enzyme immunoassay for the quantitative analysis of gliadins from wheat and corresponding prolamines from rye and barley in food. Gluten is the characteristic term for the protein mixture of glutelins and gliadins (prolamines) found in cereals. The proportion of glutelin to gliadin in the protein mixture is approximately the same

Ridascreen Gliadin (R7001)

Detection limit: 1.5 ppm gliadine corresponding to 3 ppm (0.0003%) wheat gluten

Sample preparation: Homogenization and extraction

Incubation time: 1h 30 min

Note: The gliadin test can detect gluten from wheat, rye and barley quantitatively with a detection limit of 3 ppm.

Ridascreen Fast Gliadin (R7002)

Detection limit: 5 ppm gliadin corresponding to 10 ppm (0.001%) wheat gluten

Testing time: Approximately 1 hour.

Note: In addition to wheat gluten, the Fast Gliadin kit is 100% cross-reactive to rye and barley.

This is a production testing kit NOT a lab analysis. There is a world of difference.

If you are looking for a CYA instead of fact this is ideal and saves them circa $300 on a proper lab analysis by GC-MS which can detect ppb.

The screening tests are designed for production line screening NOT making statements about the composition.

Secondly the statement is deliberatly misleading... they quote a gliadin test but in units of gluten which in durham wheat is 0.8:1

The bottom line is McDonalds has been in court over misleading its consumers many times. Some of the cases have been wrong, some have been dropped on insufficient evidence of culpability and some have been found true. Is this really the profile of a company you want to trust?

In the end we all need to decide that for ourselves.

In most cases I find that being glutened actually exasperates my other sensitivities.

I can usually get away with casein but not when glutened and my hay fever returns when glutened.

Beer always left me feeling phlelgmy before gluten-free.... so it could be a combination of the gluten and the other things in beer or perhaps something else in the meal as well.

From my experience there is no simple answer to your question. However, the new labeling laws will rule out wheat (they have to list this), but not gluten. It also depends on the product. For example, if it is Kraft I would say it is safe. Kraft's policy is not to hide gluten. If it were me I would wait until I could look up the product on the internet or call the company.

Hez

Have to agree, I find brands you can trust and ones you cannot.

However most of all I recommend not buying anything that says "spices" or "natural flavoring" on the packet...

It is hard to expresss just how important lunch is with colleages.

In fact if you have a restaurant de enterprise they are bound by law to proivde you with sometihng so far as I know but actually getting them to do it is another thing.

The big problem I had was being expected to eat with people at lunch or business meetings and total lack of acceptance of celiac disease. You can kiss progression in any French company goodbye if you don't go to lunch with your boss and if you try and explain its basically down to you and your boss.

Its really a case of damned if you do or don't.

I tried several times to explain this to my boss and just got a look like telling him I was an alien from a small planet in another galaxy... when I tried to subtly mention it to the company Dr. he talked about repatriation meaning redundancy ...

You can try explaining, be forceful etc. but obviously the more forceful you are with an employer the less you will progress. Ultimately they can just repatriate you unless you have a real French contract and make you redundant back home.

I started a new thread on the GFP forum for employment issues.. Im working on how to post things right now...

Sorry, have a meeting this AM, will get back later...

By going entirely or almost entirely gluten-free with your kitchen, you won't have to worry as much about silly habits, your child accidentally getting something bad, major contamination, etc. And it's not like you'll necessarily miss out on that much. (I say that because my picky eater of a husband doesn't find it too tricky.)

I don't worry about cc at home because I know the enviroment I am working in. If we had a lot of gluten onsite like I'm sure a lot of homes have I probably would have had a problem by now. I spent the first couple of months on the diet being paronoid about everything. After I realized that I could exist in a gluten-free enviroment I relaxed and cooking and eating is business as usual.

I honestly think this is the bottom line.... I enjoy cooking but I couldn't relax if I worried about everything and the easiest thing is just keeping the kitchen 100% gluten-free. My gluten-free has some cookies and the odd thing all in sealed jars but she will always take them away to open.

The more you get into it the more you realise and in terms of not worrying the whole time or blaming yourself if some glutening happens somewhere it just works out much easier. The problem is if you make gluten stuff as a one-off you are careful but when its in the kitchen everyday it just takes one slip.

I buy those industrial sized paper rolls for anything suspect (visitors etc.) so as not to contaminate dishcloths and tea towels etc. Also I like using the magic foam stuff.... I feel if gluten gets into cracks and crevices its brought out by the foam...

I forgot to mention that my daughter's ped. GI was supposedly THE expert on Celiac in that office, and he was so dismissive of my assertions that she had it, because I had been positively dx'ed, I had been sick ALL my life and my daughter had ALL the same symptoms I had as a baby. He refused to consider a dx of Celiac and dismissed me as a hypochondriac mother. So needless to say I don't have much faith in supposed expert Dr.s opinions. Most of them are still operating on such outdated information, and they are unwilling to consider that a parent knows their child best. That is why a good pediatrician is crucial. If you can get a good ped's support in trying the diet, that is a win win situation.

I think the problem is Dr.s only see the disease from afar. Having been through this yourself firsthand it is far easier to pick up on symptoms and nuances that a GP would never notice.

Its ridiculous to think that in a few sessions your Dr. can even being to know your child like you do....

Does anyone know of any good links concernng the epidemiology of Celiac Disease? I know there is a high rate of this disease in Irish & Scandinavian lines, but can't remember where I read that..

I think it's really interesting that we've seen a lot of both of those already listed in these posts.

And I think it's cool that there are people who *don't* have that lineage who are showing that it *does* show up elsewhere!

Thanks everybody

- Michelle

The original Irish and Scandanavians are pretty much as seperate as possible. They are closer to North African Berbers than germanic peoples having orginally migrated from present day Iraq westwards.

Most germanic peoples are decended from the goths and visigoths from Sweden which includes the sterotypical Dutch, Northern German and Scandanavians. These took the place of the celtic tribes which fell at the end of the Roman Empire... fleeing Westwards.

In the same way the slavic peoples were pushed west under the mongols ...and Alexander mixed up half of the area East of Macedonia. The Cartheginians equally migrated west from their phonecian origins.

then agains the Scandanvians were in Dublin for 500 yrs and Romans everywhere.

Very little hard historical evidence exists prior to Suetonius due to various historical events and his history is mostly all that remains as a summary (sometimes rather poetic) of previous historians.

The germ is the very heart of the wheat seed, surrounded by the things it needs to germinate later.

The companies that make those "Green" drinks like Amazaki (sp?) and such, claim that wheat grass is gluten-free, personally, I'm with you, it scares me. The fact that it is still part of the wheat plant is too close for my comfort, but those companies claim that it does not contain the protein gluten, and therefore is gluten-free.

As for me, I'm too chicken to even try it! I'd be curious to see if anyone else consumes wheat grass with no adverse side effects~

I agree, how does the gluten get into the ears or whatever they are called if not through nutrients carried through the shoots... it might not be gluten exactly but it must contain everything to make gluten.

All I can say is try as you might you will never stop cross contamination. I have tried it and failed and I am used to working in labs with lethal substances.

I remember cooking pasta one day for a friend while I made mine gluten-free ... seperate spoons and all.

While eating my pasta I found a spirili in my fusilli and it was too late.

I have no idea how it was transferred all I can say is accidents happen regardless of care.

I can give you 1001 potential risks which are all tiny by themselves ... what if one of his friends is over and makes a sandwich and touches a knife to the butter? What if he sleepwalks?

On contamination, the water temperature is irrelevant. Gluten is not alive, its not going to be killed by bleach or hot water. If you even use the same dishwasher you will contaminate the plates. If you use the same pan scrub or dishcloth you contaminate.

The only sure way is to have a 100% gluten-free kitchen..... and I suspect you are beginning to realise this.

You can try all you want with foil in the oven etc. but in the end crumbs are crumbs... and the best way is for the whole family to be gluten-free. Sorry but that is a fact. What you do to deviate from that has risk.. and each thing is a small extra risk. The problem is cooking is something we do several times a day, thousands of times a year and mostly on semi-autopilot. Sooner or later an error will happen. We all take risks everyday, from crossing the street to being hit by lightening ... however the most important thing is to be aware of the risks and make our decisions based on that.

I'm just saying it the way it is. ... even if you decide to buy a new set of pans/bowls and dishcloths you are aware.... buy color coded ones for instance and you control the risks.

I think your concerns for the futire are valid so I somewhat take a different viewpoint perhaps than others so far.

There is no harm in getting a full suite of tests with enterolab etc. assuming you can pay have insurance etc. and if you think you will have to do this in the future then perhaps its better now.

Once you start a gluten-free diet and presuming it works how will you feel having to put her back on gluten to get testing?

Many of us have gone down this road ourselves as adults and for me the idea of going back on gluten to get a biopsy to confirm the bloodwork is not an option.

The problem with the diet is most peope start off in good faith but miss details like cross contamination and hidden gluten. they see an improvement but feel they are missing something and eventually discover a few suspect items and .... its a long road. Once you get down thius road it is incredibly difficult to make a decision to go back down it again and deliberatly poision yourself (or your daughter) in order to get tested.

A word of caution when using books as a reference. Like everything in life things can change over time (think vinegar, used to be considered unsafe, now we know it is safe). So things that were correctly written at the time may no longer hold true now. I find I depend on Gluten Free Living magazine's back cover to look for safe and unsafe ingredients. I only write this because I have run into books that are somewhat outdated and do not reflect the latest infomation.

With the new labeling laws if the modified food starch is from wheat it must state wheat as an ingredient.

Hez

True and apart from what is considered safe changing as I understand it the US take on starch and vegetable sugars including dextrines etc. is not because of any regualtion, simply that the commercial suppliers use corn and thier plants are set up specifically to handle it.

With globalisation there is no reason for them to continue using domestic sourced dextrose or starch deriviatives even if the product is still manufactured in the US...

The new labelling should help but the problem is that in most cases there is no tracability of the ingredients. Companies don't specifically order 1000 tons of modified corn dextrose, they order 1000 tons of dextrose from whoever is cheapest. modified starch, dextrose and caramel color are just commodities...

If for instance their is a excess of these items in europe or elsewhere their price will drop and it will be cheaper for US companies to buy them than domestic..

Once on a camping/cycling holiday in France before I lived here I stopped with my ex in Saumur in the Loire valley. We had a wonderful day and got back to the car in order to drive to the next campsite and decided to rearrange the locks and things which held the bikes to the cycle rack. We had partially used the locks as extra tie-downs to hold the bikes firmly and when travelling short distances we just put the bokies on but if going further/faster in the car we would partially dismantle the bikes to make for less resistance.

Well I opened the lock which was under pressure and the keys flew off like they were launched from a cannon... they keyring came apart and the keys scattered....

We spent 2 hours looking frantically for the car key. We had people helping and we looked everywhere including the roof of the winnibago parked nearby and this guy in black who was part of the famous horse guard helped and everything... We looked under cars, over cars and found all the keys except the car key which was locked, deadlockled and immobilised....

After a good 2 hours and 10 people all helping I looked in my pocket and found... the car key... I'd obviously picked it up first and stuck it in my pocket.... I went a rather deep shade of red

Well, my boss told the woman planning the party that she MUST provide at least 2 items that are gluten-free for me. I was amazed. So, maybe it won't be so bad. But the woman was absolutely p*ssed about the idea of having to provide "special" items for me.

Good on you...

She is probably more p£$ssed that you received the attention due to you which in your case is just to be able to eat but obviously in hers is a social disorder. Good luck in your new life ... but you will find people like her everywhere. Just remember they are the ones with the social problem not you.

I think celiac is not picky on whom it visits: the vegan and meat eater are equal targets.

Celiac is an immune system disease not primarily a digestive disorder - it only manifests itself in gut.

Think about how babies come down with celiac...they don't eat meat first 6 mos of their lives, maybe soy milk, maybe only breastfed and then boom they start eating gluten and next thing they come down with celiac disease. These children were neither vegan or meat eaters.

Actually the IgG antobodies are passed through milk and in reality the baby has been eating whateve the mother was eating for 9 months so its not clearcut IMHO... but some babies developing celiac disease while not eating a certain diet or thier mothers doesn't mean much in itself anyway. That is it doesn't preclude a increased incidence with a certain diet.

At the same time I don't think vegan or meat diets are to blame per-se but I wouldn't want to rule out a connection with other allergens like soy which tend to be more prominent with vegan diets. Addiotnally grains are more prominant as a source of protein.

In the same way there is obviously a large cross over in cow-milk and celaics,

In the other sense you might say that anti-biotic loaded beef and chickens can also contribute.

Its clear that people with one intollerance are often diagnosed with more and the same with autoimmune disorders.

I think that it's more than her not "getting it", especially with a food like wheat, the most common food in our culture.

I honestly think that is why they can't get it. I would expect an oriental allergic to rice would have the same problems.

On the one hand it displays a lack of science and critical thinking on her part, the idea that her personal experience can somehow be applied to your situation and prove you "wrong" or even "untruthful" - "I eat wheat, and I don't get sick, therefore there isn't such a thing as celiac, and it's all in your head."

Better I don't go into this, I'll pm you.

But after she's decided this, she goes the next step and decides that you're doing it to annoy her and attack her culture and everything she holds dear - all intimately connected with wheat-based foods, like cookies, cakes, pies, and breads - which would be your own if you weren't so deluded. Therefore, she is doing you and everybody else a favor by putting on a party for you where no food you (claim you) can eat is served. Either (according to her plan) you eat it and do not get sick, thus proving her correct, or you don't eat it, which demonstrates you're ungrateful and lack proper manners.

I try to be absent when an occasion comes up where we are deluged with wheat products and expected to be grateful, but obviously such a party in my honor hasn't happened.

OK, I agree with this as well but for reasons I'd rather not post here...

All baking is a bit like that I find.

The problem is its so fussy to temperature and stuff and looking inside to see how its doing is another recipee for disaster so it is just practice.

The gluten-free flours all react differently and you just need to get used to them, not somethoing easy to write because its a lot of feeling.

Loads of calories but something like gluten-free carrot cake is easier because of the high oil content which prevents it sticking ... but I think you will find its just practice and after a while you will automatically adjust.

The psychological boost of a hot meal is hard to overstate.

I have a mix of things Ive done from gluten-free to being a poor student trying to get a ski vacation....

The simplest suggestion is tinned food which doesn't need cooking just warming like a tin of soup... simple but you just need a good ziplock bag to pre-warm it in a sink on the hottest setting and finally in a little camping pan/plate combined (just a shallow 4" pan with a little handle) you can sit in boiling water from the kettle after pre-warming with some boiling water.

A healthier suggestion is make your own broth but really thick ... get some good nutritious beans or lentils etc in it and reduce it until there is almost no liquid. Freeze the whole thing in a ziplock

Follow the warming up suggestions but at the end you can add some boiling water to get it a bit warmer ... you can also add your noodles ..

Another tip is to use the gluten-free bagettes the type you have to oven finish for 10 mins but wrap them in foil and take them out after 8 and let them finish cooking in the foil so they retain moisture and stay fresh a little longer.

With a bit of practice and a pencil and string you can suspend the little pan inside a kettle...

Another great thing, especially with the noodles is to steam some vegetables a small seive placed over the top of the kettle with some aluminum foil covering it is ideal. I'd be real careful boiling eggs in the kettle directly they will be real hard to get off the element if one cracks during cooking...

Not that I have tried the pizza's myself but I think its worth considering pricewise that its not just the cost of the rice flour etc.

From what everyone is saying it sounds like the toppings are good quality and I think you have to consider the scale of the operation. First off they must be paying over the odds for their supplies both to make sure they are gluten-free and because they are just buying small amounts... then the cost of a gluten-free kitchen and redistribution.

I have to say at that price it is something to treat as a luxury but if you treat it as such then the price ins't too far out. At the end of the day you are paying for convenience, you can make your own pizza dough for cents and excluding leaving it to prove half an hours time investment so if you look on it as a little treat for yourself in terms of lazyness once in a while its not a bad price for a treat.

I do the same thing with gluten-free bread etc., well mainly I just don't make/use it but when I do I remind myself its a luxury not an everyday thing.

One hopes that Amy's will take into account the growing market and not see this as an excuse not to drop the price as sales increase. passing on benefits to their (customers) but otherise it looks to me (as an outsider like a catch-22).

Wow! That's nasty! I hope by "going away" you mean you're going far enough away from this person so that you won't have to deal with her anymore. Sheesh!

I think some people just have problems beleiving this.... they are not necassarily bad people there just seems to be some people can't get it.

You can compare it to music in someways, some people just will not even try and listen to a classical track and others refuse anytihng not.... my bet is she is restrictive about this in other things in her life too.

On a different perspecive, my gluten-free is bilingual but she answers me in Englsih regardless of whether I ask a question in French or English. Its an association thing.. she associates me with speaking in English and other friends with French. We often sit with a third person discussing in either language and she will answer each person in the language she associates with that person, even when the other perosn is also bilingual...

I have lots of old pre diagnosis friends who find it VERY hard to accept my disease. Its because they knew me for years eating pizza and stuff with them. They still say "want a beer" ... etc. wheras friends I have made since diagnosis don't do this, they don't associate me with having a beer anymore.

add me to the list, its mainly my arms which are not so big or bad but then sometimes I get a huge one on my back, always close to the spine...last time the Dr wanted to send me to a surgeon ....

That happens with doctors for me. I have so many allergies and life threatening reactions that they often refuse to operate. I have wisdom teeth that need out but I can't find a doctor who will do it. They don't want to put me out, and they are afraid I will react badly to the medicines. So I have a pusing wisdom tooth and I have to live with it. At this point it's grown into the nerve and the risk of damage would probably be too high.

Ouch! You have my sympathy, when mine came through I got a huge abcess but couldn't afford to have it operated. I actually dreampt of teeth nightly it hurt so much... I had nightmares of it shattering and falling out and stuff...

Hey everyone,

Probably a long shot, but just curious as to whether or not there are any celiacs living in France?

I had the same problem so I started a support website

Open Original Shared Link

I am really busy right now so the site is a little stalled (hope to be free in 2 weeks) but I collect everything.

We also have a forum etc. the idea being to swap tips and things...

Its only been up a few weeks in total but I am getting about 30 people a day at the moment..I just need more people to post their things since the idea is to build a community not just a static website.