Gluten ist verboten!
Is hearing all this hype about eating gluten free sounding a lot like a foreign language?
Luckily, learning to eat gluten free is a lot easier than learning german! I started eating gluten free a little over 5 weeks ago so by no means am I an expert. I did however spend months researching and trying out gluten free recipes and products before making the full commitment. Now I am not trying to sell this diet as a “fad” diet to lose weight, solve all your health problems, or make you feel like you feel like a sparkly unicorn. I am saying however that Celiac, gluten intolerances, and sensitivities can go undiagnosed for years since there are a variety of symptoms and they are simply just tricky to put the pieces together. So it may be the right thing for you or it may not, only you can decide that. Now before I get ahead of myself let me explain a little about what gluten is.
Gluten is protein found in wheat, barley and rye. Gluten gives elasticity to dough, helps it rise and plays a big part in making bread and other baked good so absolutely wonderful. So why take such a magical protein out of your diet? Well unfortunately not everyone responds well to gluten. Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder, consuming gluten creates an immune reaction that damages the gastrointestinal tract. This leads to the “expected” symptoms of the GI tract, like diarrhea, constipation, bloating and stomach pains. If someone has Celiac then they need to stay away from gluten as much as possible because even if they may not feel the symptoms the gluten can still be damaging their intestines. Gluten intolerance and insensitiveness are different from Celiac, which I will go into further discussion in later posts. What is important for this post are the common symptoms and possible other symptoms which can consist of irritability, depression, joint pain, muscle cramps, skin rashes, neuropathy and migraines. Research is still exploring all the connections gluten has to other diseases and disorders, there is still much that is not fully understood. However there are reasons to believe that eating a gluten free diet can help migraines, autism, ADHD and even fibromyalgia.
I have been suffering from migraines for as long as I can remember. I spent on average 10 days a month with a migraine. That’s a lot of life to be missing out on. If you aren’t familiar with what migraines are they aren’t just bad headaches. They are excruciatingly painful and debilitating. This is why I have chosen to try eating gluten free in hope that I will experience some relief. I’m sure migraines will be a topic that comes up often in my posts since they are a big part of my life.
Now what about actually eating gluten free? First of all don’t panic, gluten free pecan pie exists!!! Most goodies like cookies, brownies and cakes can be made gluten free using alternate flours other than wheat flour, such as rice flour, coconut flour, quinoa flour, almond flour, tapioca flour and many others. Baked good are easy to replace, breads are a little tougher. It’s hard to find a good gluten free bread, they tend to be denser and have a different mouth feel, however toasting gluten free bread generally makes a decent improvement. Pastas also come in gluten free forms, such as rice pastas or corn pastas which are very popular. I find most pastas to be decent and acceptable, most of the time I don’t even notice a difference. Gluten can hide in many products you wouldn’t think of, like licorice, soy sauce, some soups or stews, and even oats. Now oats are a special circumstance, although oats in and of themselves are gluten free they are easily contaminated by wheat either growing next to them in fields or in the plant their are processed in. Eating gluten free require reading the ingredient list on pretty much everything you eat.
Gluten free getting publicity as a “fad” diet is silly in my opinion. It’s not a diet that’s designed to help you lose weight, it is a legitimate lifestyle choice designed to remove an ingredient that may causing or potentially causing you harm. If something is gluten free it doesn’t automatically make it “healthy”, a brownie is a brownie regardless of what kind of flour you use. However some people may find weight loss success on this diet because it suddenly makes it harder to give in to every guilty pleasure. Are cookies, cakes, brownies, doughnuts and all those goodies still available gluten free? Why yes they are! But are they suddenly harder to get a hold of? Requiring special trips to stores that stock gluten free items? Yuppers! I find it’s easier to control how much of those goodies you eat when you have to make more of an effort to make or buy gluten free versions. So eating gluten free can help control your moderation of certain foods. Also eating gluten free encourages variety in your diet. Wheat can be healthy for some people but too much of a good thing is bad for anyone. Wheat is present in a considerable amount of our food today, especially processed foods. So choosing gluten free options are helping you chose alternatives to wheat and creating more variety! So yes if done properly (as in not just bingeing on gluten free brownies with the impression they are void of calories) anyone can benefit from eating gluten free foods. I think anyone could benefit from incorporating more gluten free foods into their diet to increase nutritional variety, there are so many more grains out there to enjoy! However I don’t think everyone needs to commit to a fully gluten free diet. Everybody is different and what’s right for one person isn’t necessarily right for someone else.
I hope this was a useful introduction to gluten free, I’m sure I’ll be posting much more on this topic, especially ones on more specific gluten free topics but I wanted to get the conversation on gluten free started first. I encourage questions and comments about any and all of my blog posts!
Nutritioneer 