Gluten Free

allaboutthefood wrote: »

nvmomketo wrote: »

If you suspect celiac disease you might want to get tested before going GF. One must be eating gluten in the 8-12 weeks prior to testing for the tests to be accurate, and even then the tests can miss up a quarter of all celiacs. If you find you start feeling better, you would then need to resume eating gluten for 2-3 months before you could be tested.

You may want to consider going GF for a longer time period if you are going GF. Some celiacs and those with non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) will start to improve in the first month but other symptoms can take a good 6 months to start improving, especially arthralgias, neuropathies, ataxia, nutritional deficiencies, osteoporosis, hair loss, and even low energy. A GF trial of 6 months is a better bet.

All that being said, we have celiac in our family so the entire family is GF. To save money, I would avoid GF substitutes like bread as much as possible. It costs too much and tends to have more sugar, less fibre, and is not vitamin fortified like wheat products are. Potatoes, rice, and quinoa are all gf. All veggies, fruit,and eggs are gf. Meats and dairy are usually gf unless it was added in, like in sausages. Move away from sandwiches for lunch. Maybe peaunt butter on apple instead of a sandwich. a container of tuna, mayo, and celery without toast. kwim? My kids will often have soup, yogurt, left over potato or rice, some meats and cheese, nuts, and raw veggies.

... Those gf substitutes don't taste the same anyways. It took my kids months to get used to the different taste and texture. Good luck.

No allergies, I have two children with A.S.D and bad sleeping patterns and other issues and have done a lot of reading that suggest going gluten free may help with this, same with going dairy free, but they may be a bit harder to do. It was suggested to try it for a month to see if there are any differences so I thought why not, couldn't hurt. Thank you for all the info, I would much rather make all the foods than buy them. Even through I am doing this to see if there is a difference in the two children we are all going to do it. I am a bit worried about school lunches we can not send peanut butter or nuts and our kids love those. The two younger ones will eat different kinds of veggies and all fruits, but the older one is a bit harder, she is pretty picky at home she eats what's in front of her, but when she is out it's a whole other story, she is the one I am most concerned about she is always coming home telling me about all the crap she eat, I do pack her a lunch but the school also offers free food, just wish they offered healthier food.

elphie754 wrote: »

Kristinemomof3 wrote: »

If you try & make gf products from scratch, your best bet is to buy a gf baking mix or blended flour. It gets pricey, I like Bob's Red Mill 1 to 1 mix.

Only issue I have with red mill is the potential for cross contamination. They make products containing oat (which I'm allergic to) and pretty sure they make other products that contain wheat.

allaboutthefood wrote: »

She will eat what I put in front of her at home, we all eat left overs. The kids know you must eat it or you don't eat. They won't do anything about it, they put the food out and it's first come first serve kind of thing. I will having a talk with her and explaining what we are doing and why we are doing it and hopefully she won't "cheat" when she is not home. Thank you for the input and happy to hear it is working with your child. Have you tried dairy free @nvmomketo?

shaumom wrote: »

I'm just going to throw out a variety of things here. :-)

1. When it comes to going GF, I would, honest to god, avoid substitutions, period. My daughter is both celiac and on has ASD as well. Here's what I have noticed about the gluten free substitutions: to achieve the look, texture, and taste of foods with gluten, they typically add in ingredients which can ALSO cause problems. It kind of felt like my daughter improved for a little bit when we were eating mostly unprocessed food as we tried to figure out the diet, but start having trouble again when we started adding in processed GF foods. She has done MUCH better on home made foods that don't involve subs much. I couldn't say this works for everyone, but it made a difference for us.

Some possible reason that these GF foods could be an issue might be that they have more gums added (known for causing a section of the population bowel problems with these, especially xanthan gum), artificial flavorings and dyes (GF foods don't brown like gluten foods do, and of course don't taste the same), more substances used for thickeners, and a LOT more rice. Like, nearly every GF food sub in existence has rice as a major ingredient. I only mention this because, as you might have noticed a couple years back, rice in the US (and some other areas) seems to be higher in arsenic. For those who don't have rice as often, not a big deal. But for those eating a lot of GF foods, there has been speculation that it could be something to keep track of (no research on this at all, however. it's simply speculation)

2. For what TO eat, Foods that worked for us (although we're still working on it, sometimes), have been
- Foods from Asia. We sometimes used GF soy sauce, because this is actually old fashioned soy sauce, before wheat was used as a filler. It's better than the regular wheat filled soy sauce. Then we also looked at flat breads (like Ethiopian traditional Injera bread, or French chickpea based socca). Foods from a variety of countries in Africa. And plain foods from here, like veggies and fruit, roasted meats, and so on.

3. When we were starting out, and my daughter was very upset at the idea of different foods of ANY kind, what helped me a lot was looking at Japanese bento boxes and how they were set up. We got bento box supplies (which are NOT needed - a simple little box like a glass, or even plastic, tupperware style box will work) - had to save up for them. We checked them out, though, to get ideas for what we could do, first ( - little boxes, and picks for food, and ideas for cutting pieces of food - http://en.bentoandco.com/collections/bento-boxes-newest-oldest )

We got a lot of recipe ideas and more here:
http://justbento.com/handbook/bento-basics

If you are not familiar with it, basically - it's making lunch using little bits of food leftovers, or newly made, and prettying them up. So, for example, a little rice with a tiny tinfoil 'wall' barrier in the middle of the box separating the box from, as an example, 3 cupcake wrappers that might contain, say, pieces of bell pepper cut into star shapes with cookie cutters in one, a tiny salad with some circle and triangle shaped pieces of carrot and cucumber, and the third would have some cooked chicken with soy sauce and chopped garlic.

My daughter really liked being able to make it pretty. Some that people make are REALLY elaborate and they even make pictures out of the food, or mold things like rice snow men or carefully cut pieces of ham, cheese, seaweed and more to make cartoon faces, etc... The following website acts like these super-fancy ones are made all the time, but that's BS. Most every day bentos are a little pretty, not hugely amazing like these ones: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/creative-and-interesting-bento-boxes/ ). She liked being able to make things look like she wanted. Like she liked flowers better than circles or strips, and she got to cut out her veggies into a shape she liked, which made her more likely to eat them.

It's also GREAT for leftovers One meatball is perfect as a little addition in this kind of lunch. Or half a hard boiled egg, a teaspoon of sauce, a 1/2 cup of rice, etc... I cannot say enough about how much this has improved my kids' eating habits after we had to go gluten free.

allaboutthefood wrote: »

JoRocka wrote: »

if you aren't allergic to gluten- what exactly are you expecting to accomplish?

There has been research done on gluten and dairy and how it can affect autism, so I thought why not try it? I have nothing to lose. I have cut out other things from their diet and it helps. So going to give this a go just to see if there is a difference in certain behaviors. I am not saying it will work but I am willing to give it a try.

blankiefinder wrote: »

nvmomketo wrote: »

Canada actually has excellent labelling laws. If it is one of the major allergens or food sensitivities the label must say "contains" or "may contain" below the ingredients. That includes eggs, soy, wheat, gluten, milk, tree nuts, peanuts, mustard and a few other ingredients. Some foreign foods I wouldn't trust but any North American foods will usually be labelled as "may contain gluten" if there is a chance of contamination.

If this was in reference to my comment about being careful about different ingredient formulations between countries, the reason I mentioned it is because some of us also use google or gluten free blogs. My point was to always check the label, even on products that were safe in the past (such as the lee & perrins I mentioned. Was safe, changed formulation in Canada with no fanfare)