Learning to Live Gluten-Free

In the past few years there's been a noticeable trend in restaurants catering to the special dietary needs of their customers. They started out with vegetarian dishes, and now they’ve incorporated full menus addressing allergies to peanuts, seafood, dairy, and the newest to hit the scene, the gluten-free menu. Is gluten-free the new hot topic?

Right now you might be saying, “What is gluten?” Trust me; I said the same thing. The three culprits in gluten that give many people digestive issues are: wheat, rye and barley. Don’t be fooled in thinking three items is a short list to eliminate from your diet. It’s not as easy as it sounds. You will be totally surprised by all the items that have some form of gluten in their list of ingredients. Learning to live healthier and happier by eating gluten-free is a whole new lifestyle change, and thankfully I discovered many organizations that carry the items needed to begin my journey.

After years of agony from eating some of my favorite foods, such as pasta alfredo, lasagna or Chinese stir-fry, I began to notice I had completely stopped eating them. I convinced myself the absence of these particular foods was due to my desire to lose weight. In hindsight, I now believe I was staying away from food that made me ill. All this time I thought the bloating and uncomfortable pain I experienced after eating pizza and pasta was just because I ate too much of a fattening carbohydrate meal. Now, I can even eat gluten-free pizza and feel so much better.

I started realizing there was a problem when I attended a charity luncheon that included Reuben sandwiches and I immediately felt very ill. My first thought was food poisoning; because I had no idea my body was sensitive to the gluten from the rye bread. During my next doctor appointment, while discussing my chronic fatigue, she suggested I look into food sensitivities, and in particular, gluten. I never imagined that food sensitivity could be linked to my chronic fatigue. I was already lactose intolerant (and later learned that most people who are gluten intolerant are sensitive to lactose) and now I needed to learn if gluten was the cause of my digestive issues and my constant state of fatigue. Could this be the root cause of health issues my doctors have been unable to solve for the last 7 years?!?

My doctor told me the best way to determine if I was sensitive to gluten was to compare how I felt after eating an item with gluten to items without gluten. So that weekend I set out to do just that.  It was immediately obvious; I had a sensitivity to gluten. I kept testing the theory because I could not believe the foods I have eaten all these years were now making me sick. Talk about self-inflicted pain! 

I conducted some online research to see what items contained gluten. Gluten’s infiltration into our everyday life goes far beyond bread, pasta and cookies. Gluten is in salad dressing and sauces, lunch meats, potato chips, cereal, beer, and even candy, just to name a few. I immediately checked my pantry for items I could no longer eat. An even harder task was planning meals around my new diet.

It’s amazing how long I’ve shopped our local grocery stores and never noticed they started carrying gluten-free items. Now, due to my new food sensitivity, I am keenly aware of any retail venue that caters to my new dietary needs. Our local Fenton store, “Marjie’s Gluten Free Pantry – Circle of Life Nutrition, LLC”, stocks quite a few gluten-free items that helped introduce me to my new world. I thoroughly enjoyed making carrot cake cupcakes from their Namaste Foods spice cake mix. They were so yummy, but I have to keep reminding myself “just because it’s gluten-free, doesn’t mean its calorie free!”

My new lifestyle has inspired me to seek out restaurants that have a gluten-free menu to make dining out simpler and healthier. I’m also looking forward to shopping on a new website devoted to gluten-free items (http://www.celiac.com/glutenfreemall/). 

It may feel like a huge inconvenience at times, but now that I’ve discovered all the places that can help me maintain a gluten-free diet, I’m excited to be eating healthier and feeling better.