Living A Gluten Free Life

For a person with gluten intolerance or gluten allergy or celiac disease, it is imperative to live a completely gluten-free life. It requires staying away from traditional foods such as breads, pastas, baked goods, sauces, cereals and gravies. You need to replace them with things such as rice, potato, corn, risotto, millet, quinoa, buckwheat and amaranth. You can also consume lentils, beans and chickpeas. There are many other replacement flours to the gluten-containing flours and these are becoming popular lately. They include sorghum flour, chickpea or Bengal gram flour, soy flour and bean and pea flours. People who contemplate on gluten-free diet might as well include arrowroot flour, corn flour and tapioca starch extract as combination flours to the base flour to make palatable recipes. These act as thickeners and leavening agents in those recipes that are made of flours wanting gluten. Just those combos and you are off to a tasty gluten free life.

Gluten-free Diet Tips

Although you might be intimidated by the idea of living life without eating those traditional foods, there are several delicious gluten-free foods available in nature. You can have foods made with rice, corn, and tapioca flours. You can opt for gluten-free goodies such as sauces, cereals, beer, candy and pasta. Here are a few tips that will help you to make sure that the food you are eating is gluten free indeed.

• Are you reading labels on the food packs before buying them? If not, make sure that the food product label clearly says “gluten free.” If you are not sure of gluten presence in any food, it is always safe to avoid that food.

• Search for the gluten in your pantry
  There are certain food items that carry gluten in the latent form; for instance some of the sauces, some of the malt flavoring agents, malt per se, etc. Stay off these things.

• Avoid processed foods as they contain additives having gluten
  While going out to dine, take care of what you eat. Search for those gluten-free restaurants. These days there are pretty many restaurants that are friendly to the gluten sensitive people. If you should be unsure, speak to the restaurant manager in advance, they might accommodate according to your preferences.

• You can order online also for gluten-free sauces, cookies, pasta pizzas and snacks.

Warnings When You Follow Gluten Free Diet

If you have recently switched to gluten-free diet, it is important for you to know some important things in this regard. It sometimes seems challenging to cook a gluten-free diet, which is an essential treatment for a celiac person. However, if you follow some tips and take care of a few warnings while purchasing gluten free foods and cooking gluten free recipes, it will not be as difficult an every day task as you must have imagined it to be.

• Watch your portion. Even though gluten-free food is safe and healthy for you, it is still not calorie free. It also contains carbohydrates and fats like its gluten counterparts.

• Beware of certain foods such as emulsifier, natural flavor, dextrin, mono and di-glycerides, caramel color, etc., as they can carry gluten.

• Also, if you are experiencing any gastrointestinal distress after eating any gluten-free product, consult your doctor.

• For a celiac, it is always unsafe to consume even a pinch of gluten seasoning. So, completely eliminate gluten for their diet. Use only freshest ingredients to prepare gluten-free meals. Just segregate all the things used for preparing gluten and gluten-free foods such as countertops, cutting boards, forks, knives and spoons to avoid contamination with gluten.

Although initially, it may take efforts to start gluten-free eating, soon it will become part of your lifestyle, way of life. Happy gluten-free living.