Things you might not think of containing gluten‏

When you go on a gluten-free diet and are beginning the learning process of what you can and cannot eat, you might not think of things that don't present an obvious reason to contain gluten. Below are a few of those items I had to learn about on my own.

  1. Toothpaste  ̶̶  Crest, Colgate and Aquafresh claim to be gluten free; Sensodyne does not guarantee that it is gluten free.

  2. Gum on envelops and stamps

  3. Communion wafers  ̶̶   and don't drink wine from a communal cup either. All those lips touching that cup are glutened with communion wafers and God knows what else.

  4. Broth/soup  ̶̶  unless you make it yourself or use a specifically gluten-free brand such as Pacific or Trader Joe’s

  5. Imitation crab  ̶̶  has wheat in it

  6. Soy sauce and teriyaki sauce  ̶̶  both have wheat in them

  7. A kiss  ̶̶  if the person you’re kissing has been drinking beer or eating gluten-filled foods

  8. Semen  ̶̶  he is what he eats, and you may react to exposure to his bodily fluids

  9. Lipstick, lip gloss, lip balm  ̶̶  Carmex guarantees its products are GF. Lots of lipsticks claim to be GF but I don’t have a lot of information on this.

10. Chocolate  ̶̶  if it comes from a facility that dusts their conveyor belts with flour to keep it from sticking

11. Vitamins, herbal supplements and medications  ̶̶  prescription and over-the-counter

12. Rice prepared by someone other than you  ̶̶  people (and restaurants) often cook rice with broth, which is usually not gluten free 

13. Processed meats/sandwich meats

14. Condiments, seasonings and salad dressings

15. Ice cream (some brands)

16. Potato chips (some brands) 

17. Anything fried in the same vat of grease as foods with gluten  ̶̶  e.g. corn chips at almost any Mexican restaurant

18. Dishwashing detergent  ̶̶  this one I just learned about. It never occurred to me that my detergent might contain gluten.

Some people are more sensitive to gluten than others, so some folks may not be affected by some of the items listed above, while others might be struggling to figure out why they keep having reactions even when they believe they’re totally avoiding gluten. You just have to determine what you can and cannot tolerate.

What if Kurt Cobain had stopped eating gluten?

Could a gluten-free diet have saved Kurt Cobain? I don't know. But I was just wondering, what if he had known about gluten? What if he had tried going gluten free? What if a gluten-free diet could have saved him. He might not have been so depressed and hopeless. He might not have been so tortured. 

Even before he started using heroin, Cobain was sickly and skinny (suspiciously symptomatic of celiac disease). He threw up often, especially when he was nervous or stressed out. Concert tours were physically and emotionally exhausting for him, and at least once (that I know of) he literally had a nervous breakdown during a show and threatened to commit suicide right there in front of the audience. 

Anyone who struggles with gluten sensitivity and has gone on a gluten-free diet has probably noticed there is a direct correlation between gluten consumption and bouts of depression, anxiety, and other emotional issues, in addition to the gastrological difficulties. The pressures of fame and grueling concert tours would have done me in too before I went gluten free. 

I think a gluten-free diet would have helped him feel better and possibly could have saved his life. I may be wrong. I didn't know him personally, so who's to say. Just my own personal theory. 

Kurt Cobain was the front man for the musical group Nirvana. He suffered from illness and depression most of his life and in the last few years of his life struggled with heroin addiction. He died from a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head, April 5, 1994 at the age of 27.

Is the gluten-free diet just a trend?

 

Eating gluten free is either very trendy right now or more and more people are discovering that they feel better when they avoid gluten. My belief is the latter is most likely the case. According to an Oct. 22, 2012 article in the Huffington Post, gluten-free food sales have become a $4.2 billion industry.

Link to article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/22/gluten-free-foods-market-42-billion-dollars_n_2003721.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

People often ask me how I eat sandwiches

When I first went on this gluten-free diet (March 2007), I was telling my dad about it and how much better I felt. He thought maybe he should try it too after realizing he had a lot of the same symptoms I had had before going gluten-free.

I called him the next night and asked how the gluten-free diet was going and he said, “It’s too hard. I don't know what I’m supposed to eat for lunch if I can't eat sandwiches.” He made me chuckle, but he’s right. Lunch without sandwiches is quite an adjustment and requires some planning.

People ask me all the time how I eat sandwiches without bread or what I do for sandwich bread. My answer is I don’t really eat sandwiches. Gluten-free bread is high in sugar, fat and calories and also extremely expensive. And on top of that, it usually doesn’t even taste very good -- at least not compared with regular bread.

I have used corn tortillas or lettuce to roll things up in or sometimes just roll up a piece of ham and cheese together as a snack. But generally speaking, sandwiches are not on the menu at my house.

For lunch at work, I usually take a salad or left-overs from dinner the night before. I really don’t miss sandwiches, but that's probably because I wasn't ever really a big sandwich eater -- since bread made me feel so bad. I've never been a big bread eater for that reason. Long before I’d ever even heard the word gluten, I knew bread didn't agree with me, so a sandwich was rarely on my meal plan. I guess that’s why it’s so much easier for me to adjust to life without sandwiches than it is for my dad.

For Starters

If you’re new to the gluten-free diet, there are some things to keep in mind that you may not have thought of yet. You will want to watch out for hidden sources of gluten and the possibility of cross-contamination. Those are the things people don’t think of.

For example: mayonnaise is gluten free, but not if you’ve spread it on bread and put the knife back in the jar. Once you do that then the whole jar is contaminated and anyone who is gluten intolerant should not eat mayonnaise from that jar. This also goes for butter, cheese, peanut butter, jelly, etc. Anything that might be spread on bread or crackers or have bread, crackers, pretzels, etc. dipped into it.

When my daughter lived at home with me, we would use a Sharpie to write “GF” on items that had not been contaminated. If it got contaminated, she would draw a circle with a line through the “GF” to warn me not to eat it. This worked well for us.

Hidden sources of gluten include most processed foods, and gluten is rarely listed in the ingredients. I avoid processed meats, including sandwich meats, boloney (yes, I know it‘s supposed to be bologna but I‘m from the south and I don‘t say bologna, I say boloney), most types of sausage, hotdogs, etc.

Hormel often has gluten-free meats and they are labeled gluten-free. I buy Hormel bacon, ham and pepperoni -- all gluten free. Most Boar’s Head deli meats are gluten-free, but if they slice it on the same slicer as all the other meats then it’s contaminated. It’s stuff like that that you have to think about.

You can’t always trust a package that is labeled “gluten-free.” I usually go to a gluten-free forum on-line and see what other GF folks have to say about a specific product. The FDA allows “gluten-free” labeling if the product has below a certain percentage of gluten, so it may not be totally gluten-free. Canned soups are not usually gluten free, so don’t make anything with cream of whatever soup or broth unless it is a specifically gluten-free brand and you know you can trust it. Campbell’s and Swanson are not safe. Pacific Natural Foods and Trader Joe’s both make gluten free soups. Many Progresso soups are now labeled gluten free, but I haven't tried them yet.

You will also need to learn about ingredients that contain gluten. For example, modified food starch in the United States is usually made from corn, but in Europe is usually made from wheat. So you need to know the brand and know whether you can trust it. If you see Malt or Maltdextrin in the ingredients, it’s not gluten-free. But Maltodextrin is made from corn, so it’s ok. The difference in the two words is the o in the middle.

Below is a link to a site that provides more information about hidden gluten in ingredients.
Good luck! It‘s not hard once you get used to it.
~Michelle

http://www.celiacsolution.com/hidden-gluten.html