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| Is this gluten-free holiday turkey dinner really dangerous to serve to family and guests? |
It's no secret that the market for gluten-free products is steadily growing and that the trend toward removing gluten from the diet by those who haven't been officially diagnosed with celiac disease has made a lot of people angry.
I am always running into major news stories about gluten-free diets that use quotes by professional nutritionists and celiac experts to support the author's opinion.
The slant and tone of these stories has resulted in many readers believing that a gluten-free diet is dangerous, so it should not be served to their family or guests of those who have celiac disease.
Perhaps, you believe the same thing.
While the outcry is directed toward those who have chosen to self-diagnose, the arguments and myths strategically placed within these stories are beginning to be picked up and repeated by those with celiac disease who see these news articles and quotes as authoritative.
Instead of doing your own research and coming to your own conclusion about the nutritional value of going gluten free for yourself and family, you might have automatically believed what the media said, and then unconsciously projected those ideas onto your family, guests, and others.
If so, it's time to take a closer look at what you believe.
Some Celiacs Believe Gluten-Free Food is Dangerous
In one of the comments I read this past week, a woman reacted to fellow celiacs in the comment section by cautioning them about the dangers of making their homes entirely gluten free.
The foundation for her opinion was the fear-based belief that she would endanger her family if she gave them gluten-free food because it was missing vital nutrients.
She felt so strongly about this belief that she was compelled to warn all others against serving their non-celiac family members gluten-free food on a regular basis.
Needless to say, I was flabbergasted.
Not only is that statement not true, for those of us who are super sensitive to gluten, going to a completely gluten-free home is the only way to heal.
Arguments Presented by the Media for Not Going Gluten Free
One of the major arguments against non-celiacs moving to a gluten-free diet is that unless you are extremely careful with your food choices and your diet is plotted out by a certified nutritionist or dietitian, your meals will be missing important vitamins, minerals, and fiber that you used to get when you were eating wheat.
Some arguments also claim that gluten-free products contain more calories than their counterpart because of the extra fat and sugar needed to make rice-flour baked goods more flavorful.
The media uses these justifications to support their opinion that non-celiacs have no business being on a gluten-free diet.
They even go so far as to claim that those who don't have celiac disease or have been officially diagnosed non-celiac gluten sensitivity are harming themselves and their families by eliminating gluten from their diet.
These reporters and experts feel justified in alerting the public to what they believe are real-life dangers.
I understand that.
However, most of the authors of these articles don't eat gluten free and are only parroting what they have heard from other media sources. I have run into one or two articles written by those with celiac disease, but that has been extremely rare.
What Do People on Gluten-Free Diets Actually Eat?
The argument the media has used against self-diagnosed celiacs begins to break down when you actually look at what people with celiac disease and non-celiac gluten sensitivity actually eat.
The facts: wheat flour is fortified with B-vitamins (thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, and folic acid), calcium, and iron. Standard gluten-free baking ingredients and the gluten-free products found on supermarket shelves are not artificially fortified.
The faulty assumption: those eating gluten free are not getting the essential nutrients found in wheat in any of the gluten-free foods they are eating.
A gluten-free diet is not dependent on baked goods. The bulk of a gluten-free diet consists of:
- meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and beans
- dairy products (for those who can digest them)
- fruits and vegetables
- tubers like potatoes and turnips
- brown rice, sorghum, quinoa, and other gluten-free grains
- nuts and seeds
- healthy fats and oils
Nutritionists have been advising us for years to lower our intake of sweets and highly-refined flour products and up our intake of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.
A gluten-free diet does exactly that!
What Did Most Celiacs Eat Before Eliminating Gluten?
Let's look at the issue realistically.
How many of us actually ate all of those fruits, vegetables, and whole grains that we are advised to eat before we went gluten free?
Was your diet really as nutritious as the media claims it was?
Take a few minutes to jot down what you ate before going gluten free and then give it a serious look.
In addition, the next time you go shopping, look at several grocery carts. What is in those carts?
- Whole grain cereals like cream of wheat and oatmeal?
- Expensive multi-grain breads?
- Baked goods made with only whole wheat flour?
My own observations have shown that most people prefer soft and fluffy, nutrient-depleted white bread and heavily processed luncheon meats and cheeses for their sandwiches.
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| Most celiacs did NOT eat whole-grain breads and real meat and cheese before going gluten free |
Cold cereals, chips, white rice, and flour tortillas are also common.
Overall, people eat very few fruits and vegetables. Bananas, sweet peppers, onions, and mushrooms seem to be the exception. Those who try to eat healthy reach for granola bars, dried fruit, and fruit rolls.
Fact: people want their food to taste good and nutrition often takes a back seat to taste.
What We Ate Before Going Gluten Free
Before hubby and I went gluten free, his favorite breakfast was a travel mug of coffee with French Vanilla creamer and a toasted blueberry bagel spread with butter.
He ate that before going to work almost every day.
Sometimes, he would eat a bowl of cold cereal (Honey Bunches of Oats), but that was relatively rare. Cold cereal was generally used for snacks in the afternoon or evening.
On the weekends or days he didn't have to work, he wanted a hefty breakfast:
- eggs
- bacon or sausage
- fried potatoes
- and toast with butter and jam
- along with his coffee
Occasionally, I'd eat leftovers or scramble a couple of eggs with chopped bacon ends, but I was addicted to homemade bread, so I ate that more often than anything else.
Lunch for hubby was a homemade burrito or homemade hot pocket, fruit cocktail, a mini box of raisins, and a couple of Little Debbie's cookies or cakes.
In the summer, I would also toss in a bag of chips. In California, hubby would eat fresh fruit, but the fruit in Utah was horrible, so we stopped eating it soon after we moved there.
I usually heated up leftovers for lunch, or I would make myself a tuna or ham sandwich on white bread with iceberg lettuce and processed cheese. After discovering a brand of multi-grain bread that we actually liked, we did switch to using that for sandwiches and toast.
Typically, dinner at our house was pasta with garlic bread, enchiladas with rice and beans, pork chops with Kraft macaroni and cheese, or chicken legs and thighs steeped in an extra-sweet cranberry sauce and served over mashed potatoes.
For special occasions, I might fry up some battered shrimp, whip up some hot wings, or throw a steak on the grill and a potato into the oven.
In our area, those dishes were cheap and filling, but if you take a closer look at what I was serving, only half of what we ate centered on wheat.
I did serve homemade breads and rolls with dinner sometimes, and we never went an evening without ice cream or a homemade dessert like cookies, cake, apple crisp, or homemade pie.
Ice cream was the norm for us. Not baked goods.
Overall, our diet wasn't anything like the media claims it was. It wasn't healthy.
Severely lacking in vegetables since hubby didn't particularly like them, our diet rarely featured salad because hubby preferred corn or tomatoes.
Sometimes, I opened a can of green beans or made broccoli with cheese sauce, but those vegetables generally took the place of whatever starch or wheat product I would have otherwise served with that meal.
When I went on a low-carb diet, our vegetable intake increased dramatically and our wheat consumption went way down.
We started eating more salads and a lot more vegetables, so we had already begun to move in the direction of a gluten-free diet long before we actually eliminated all forms of gluten.
The Truth About Gluten-Free Diets
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| People do not eat worse on a gluten free diet. People eat much better than they did before! |
A gluten-free diet is often healthier than how people ate before going gluten free just because of what we can and cannot eat anymore.
Gluten-free baked goods and products are very expensive and difficult to learn how to do right, so we eat a lot more fruit, vegetables, salad, and meat than we used to.
I rarely bake anymore. Instead, hubby snacks on:
- hard cheeses
- nuts
- popcorn
- raw vegetables
- organic certified gluten-free tortilla chips with homemade salsa
I want to make that point clear for those of you who are more sensitive to gluten than I am. What hubby and I can eat might not be what you can.
I'm fine with occasionally using products that come in at under 10 ppm.
I did have problems with Barilla gluten-free pasta before they took the steps to become certified, but I have never reacted to it since the change. But then, we don't eat it all the time.
Pasta contains a lot of carbs, and my blood glucose cannot handle too many carbs at one meal.
Sometimes, we use real rice flour noodles or sweet potato pasta from a local Asian grocery store, which I don't react to either.
Those new to gluten free often begin by using white-rice flour and starches. These gluten-free flours make baked goods close enough to the all-purpose flour variety so the transition to gluten free is easier and less traumatic.
White foods are easier to digest for those of us who have a lot of intestinal damage that needs to heal before we can even think about the amount of fiber in our diet.
Eating whole grains, in the beginning, can be quite painful for many celiacs, so if you're still experiencing discomfort after eating, this might be why.
I've been gluten free for over 10 years now, and I still cannot eat whole grains.
Once you start to heal, most celiacs can move into the realm of gluten-free whole grains. Many also choose to drop almost all processed foods.
Regardless of what the media says, almost all gluten-free products now contain whole grains like brown rice flour, sorghum flour, and/or additional fiber like flaxseed meal and psyllium husks.
Eating a whole foods diet can help you feel better, speed up the healing process, and offers less chances of getting glutened.
Tracking down all of the hidden sources of gluten in our diet has been difficult. However, not eating whole grains doesn't mean that our diet is not nutritious.
If you compare what we eat today to the government's dietary recommendations, we eat a well-balanced, nutritious diet. It's only the media who claims we don't.
Dietary guidelines for Americans do not say that you have to eat wheat. They merely say whole grains and point to getting adequate fiber. You can get plenty of whole grains by eating brown rice or quinoa instead of white rice if you're worried about that.
Where are the Fatalities?
If a gluten-free diet is as dangerous as the media claims, where are the fatalities?
Why is it not dangerous for celiacs to eat gluten free, but it's dangerous for everyone else?
Where are the crowds of individuals getting sick by eating this way?
Wouldn't the media be using specific examples of people who have been harmed by eating a gluten-free diet -- if there were any casualties?
You betcha they would!
Low-carb, primal, paleo, and dozens of other whole foods and grain-free diets have been around for a very long time. I'm talking decades, not just a few years.
Gluten-free diets are not new.
People allergic to wheat and other allergens have been following very restrictive diets for ages and a lot of them have figured out how to thrive eating that way.
You don't see them getting sick from eliminating wheat. Most of the time, their health improves tremendously.
The Bottom Line
Belief is a powerful source of energy that can be easily misused and misdirected if we allow other people to tell us what to think, or if we inappropriately react to what we read.
Standing back from all of the suggestions we are given in our daily lives, doing our own research, and coming to our own conclusions after personally experimenting with the ideas we read or hear about is the best way to serve our family's needs as well as ourselves.
For example, many people with celiac disease cannot live in a mixed environment. It will keep their immune system overreacting to gluten.
That's fact.
Cross contamination is difficult to avoid when others in the house continue to eat wheat, barley, and rye. It takes a high degree of awareness, knowledge, and cooperation to make it work. Very few households succeed living that way.
Not having lived with the uncomfortable symptoms that many with gluten intolerance go through each and everyday, the media and even nutritionists are not qualified to tell you what you can and cannot eat.
That's strictly your decision.
It is up to you to take charge of your own health.
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