Going Gluten Free - Diet Tips about going

Here's something to test your knowledge of food trivia - if you have a slice of bread, mushroom soup and pasta, what would you say was the common ingredient there? It's a protein called gluten, of course. It's found in all kinds of grain, barley, rye, wheat; and for people who have a certain auto-immune disorder called celiac disease, it can practically kill them if their diet isn't completely gluten free. If someone with gluten intolerance is lucky enough to experience only the milder symptoms, he'd get diarrhea, a stomach ache and nausea. The full-blown effects of gluten poisoning can attack the nervous system, the digestive system and other parts of the body. There could be seizures, bone density loss, anemia. It is kind of rare though - only about one in 100 people in this country have the illness, and so need a proper gluten free diet. But those aren't the only people who go gluten free.

Large numbers of normal people go gluten free as a lifestyle choice. Why exactly have these people voluntarily taken up a diet that the gluten intolerant positively hate? It's very difficult to find ways to make reasonable food, or to try traditional recipes if you are this way. There are all kinds of things that contain gluten - yeast, blue cheese, lots of medicines. They do it because there is a popular misguided belief out there that keeping the gluten out is a panacea for every known disease out there. In truth though, if you don't have celiac disease or intolerance for gluten for any other reason, going gluten free will do nothing for you.

That's right, there are reasons other than celiac disease why you might need to avoid gluten. It's called gluten-intolerance. If it seems like your your system reacts badly after food with gluten in it, it could be for one of two reasons. You could either have irritable bowel syndrome, or you could be gluten intolerant. And just because you have one of these conditions, there is no reason to think that it could lead you to celiac disease one day.

For those who need to go gluten free though, the good news is that package labels must always declare wheat content. And if you need to go totally gluten free, there are more and more products freely available in supermarkets these days. Would you believe that Starbucks has gluten free baked goods? In general, the FDA has new regulations on gluten free declarations on food labels. If there is one concern that you need to think about, sticking to a gluten-free diet, it has to do with getting enough fiber. If you can't eat whole grain bread and cereal, how do you find the fiber you need? Your only choice here is plenty of fruit and vegetables. Or else, you could try corn, or buckwheat.