What is gluten and where is it hiding?

Gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley, rye, and sometimes oats. The problem with oats is two-fold. Most oats are milled using the same equipment that is used for wheat, and so they are contaminated with pieces of wheat. Therefore, we can't eat them. It is possible to get wheat-free oats (they're pretty expensive), but that doesn't work for everyone because oats contain a protein called avenin that is similar to the gluten in wheat, barley, and rye. Some celiacs have no problem with it, but some react to it. For that reason, most dietitians will recommend that you avoid oats for a year or so after you are diagnosed before trying them to see how you do. And if you are having a celiac over for dinner, I would recommend just avoiding oats entirely because they wheat-free ones are pricey and sometimes hard to find, and you wouldn't want to go to all of the trouble of getting them only to find out that your friend reacts to wheat-free oats and can't eat what you made.

Of course, like everything in life, avoiding wheat, barley, rye, and maybe oats is not always so straightforward. You need to read the ingredients on everything, even if it's something you've bought before, because ingredients can change. I even read the ingredients of things that are in my cupboards before I use them because it's such a habit for me by now. Some people think that's obsessive, but I once ate a couple of pieces of non-gluten free cereal and was sick for about a week, so there's no such thing as being too careful.

This is not a complete list, but here are a few things to watch out for:
-Anything made with wheat flour (white bread is still made from wheat, even though it doesn't say "whole wheat" on the bag
-Some corn tortillas have wheat flour added to them (but corn tortillas without wheat flour are okay)
-Wheat-based pasta
-Gravy is usually made with flour, although it's very easy to substitute cornstarch or rice flour if you're making it from scratch
-Anything breaded
-Couscous (it's made from wheat)
-Barley malt extract/malt extract/malt flavoring
-LINDT TRUFFLES have barley malt extract in them, so don't eat them (but some of the Lindt chocolate bars are okay, just read the ingredients)
-RICE KRISPIES have barley malt extract in them. You'd think they would be okay because they're rice, but they're not. Same with corn flakes and basically every mainstream cereal, except gluten-free Chex the new gluten-free Rice Krispies if you're luck enough to live somewhere where you can get them.
-Soy sauce usually has wheat (in Canada, VH soy sauce is okay as of right now)
-Chinese food usually has gluten in it because of the soy sauce issue, so make sure to ask about the ingredients before eating it
-Canned soup (tomato soup has flour, cream of mushroom soup has flour, it's actually pretty hard to find a can of soup without flour in it)
-Sausages/hot dogs/burgers/meatballs often have bread crumbs in them
-Veggie burgers and veggie meat substitutes often have wheat in them
-Beer is made from barley and/or and contains gluten (unless it's gluten-free beer and it's clearly market as such). Some people mysteriously thing it's still okay to cook with beer, but I think they're confusing alcohol with gluten. The alcohol cooks out, but the gluten does not.
-Brewer's yeast is a bi-product of beer making and is not gluten free
-Malt vinegar is made from beer and is not gluten free. Other vinegars are fine.
-Worcestershire sauce sometimes contains malt vinegar and/or soy sauce depending on the brand, so read the ingredients carefully.
-Powdered broths and flavorings are not always gluten free.
-Imitation bacon bits are usually made from a combination of soy and wheat flour, so read carefully.
-Bulgur is a form of wheat
-Salad dressings can sometimes have gluten ingredients, especially "Asian"-type ones because of the soy sauce

Feel free to comment if I've missed a frequent source of hidden gluten, but those are the ones that I seem to encounter most frequently.

So what can you eat? Anything without gluten! There are gluten free versions of seemingly every gluten containing food out there, but a lot of them are expensive and full of sugar and starch and fat, so I mostly eat things that are naturally gluten free. This includes, but is not limited to:
-Vegetables
-Fruit
-Nuts and seeds
-Meat, fish, etc
-Eggs
-Dairy products
-Brown rice pasta
-Quinoa
-Millet
-Rice
-Teff
-Corn
-Beans
-Lentils
-Chickpeas (they're beans, but I love them so much that they get their own line)
-Tofu and soy products (I mostly avoid them because too much soy seems to give me stomach cramps, so you won't find too many tofu recipes on here, but you can eat it)
-Buckwheat (despite the name, it has nothing to do with wheat)
-Sugar
-Chocolate (read the ingredients)
-Tapioca
-Gelatin (I've met a number of people who haven't realized that it was safe, but it is)
-Potatoes and sweet potatoes (some people get gluten mixed up with carbs, but potatoes, rice, etc are all fine)
-Arrowroot (not those arrowroot cookies, because they have wheat flour in them, but you can cook with arrowroot starch)
-"Glutinous" rice - it's only called that because it's sticky

And many more things. Leave your favorites in the comments!

What is celiac disease?

First of all, celiac disease is different from a food allergy. It's an autoimmune disease, and in order to have it, three things must occur: you must have one of the genes for celiac disease, you must have eaten gluten, and something must have happened to trigger your body to start reacting to gluten. I'll get into what exactly gluten is in another post, but basically it is a protein that is found in wheat, barley, rye and sometimes oats. If you have celiac disease and you eat gluten, your body thinks it is some kind of foreign invader and responds by destroying the lining of your small intestine. As you can imagine, this causes all kinds of bad things to happen.

For a much better description of all of the details than I could give you, check out this website: http://www.celiacdiseasecenter.columbia.edu/A_Patients/A01-HOME.htm and go through all of the links on the left side of the page. Dr. Peter Green is one of world's leading experts on the disease and has written an excellent book called "Celiac Disease: A Hidden Epidemic" that I recommend if you are really interested in learning a lot more. However, keep in mind the following very important consideration:

IF YOU THINK YOU MIGHT HAVE CELIAC DISEASE, YOU NEED TO SEE A DOCTOR BEFORE CUTTING GLUTEN OUT OF YOUR DIET. This is very important. I am not a doctor (although I will be in a few years, I still won't be able to give you medical advice over the internet) and a recipe blog is not a substitute for medical tests. In order to be properly tested for celiac disease, you must still have gluten in your diet. If you are not eating gluten, the test results will be meaningless because once you have been off of gluten for long enough, the damage in your body is repaired and the tests won't find it. The reason this is so important is that some other medical conditions can cause similar symptoms, and you need to know if your problem is celiac disease or something else so that you can be properly treated for it. I met someone in an online support group who thought she had celiac disease, so she stopped eating gluten, but after a year she wasn't really improving so she decided to go to her doctor and get tested. She had to eat gluten for about two months so that the tests would be accurate. It turned out she had an intestinal hernia. She was treated for that and now she's fine, but if she had just gone to her doctor in the first place she could have saved herself over a year of being sick needlessly. Some people still need to eat gluten free because they have a wheat allergy, or non-celiac gluten intolerance, or another medical condition that's helped by eating gluten free, the path to finding out why you're sick will be a lot easier if you get tested first before you cut gluten out of your diet.

About Me

I was diagnosed with celiac disease in 2008. I was sick for nearly 20 years, but no one could figure out what was wrong with me so I think most people eventually decided I was faking it. But in fall of 2008, I went to a new doctor because I was just tired and sick all of the time, and it seemed to have been getting worse, and I had a history of hypothyroidism and iron-deficiency anemia. She did some blood tests, and found out that my iron levels were very low. After putting me on increasing levels of iron supplements and seeing my levels just keep dropping (at one point I was taking 900 mg of ferrous sulfate a day - that's a lot!), she knew something else was going on and tested me for celiac disease. Mystery solved! That sounds somewhat anti-climactic, but it really changed my whole life. I had been sick for so long that I didn't even really know how sick I was. It's hard to describe if you haven't been through it, but things that I thought were just normal because they had been that way for as long as I could remember (having stomach cramps all the time, not being able to sleep, being anxious all the time, going to the bathroom 6-8 times a day) suddenly changed. It really was incredible.

I was also able to lose weight for the first time ever. The stereotypical person with celiac disease is skinny and can't gain weight, but I had the opposite problem. Even though I didn't eat very much, I was really overweight. I figured it was just because of my thyroid problem. But turns out it wasn't. I was at my heaviest weight when I was diagnosed with celiac disease, and I've lost quite a bit of weight since then and I'm still losing. Lately the number on the scale has leveled off a bit because I've been doing some strength training, but my pants still keep getting smaller. Most of my recipes are pretty healthy and contain a lot of vegetables (but there will be some deserts, because we all get asked to bring desert to a potluck from time to time and you want to bring something you can eat!). I'm not a vegetarian, but I eat like one sometimes. And most of my recipes will be dairy free or have a dairy free option because I'm slightly lactose intolerant and so I limit my intake of dairy products. It is important to get enough calcium in your diet if you have celiac disease because you're at an increased risk of osteoporosis from the years of malabsorption you've probably had, but there are lots of non-dairy sources of calcium. By the way, if you do have celiac disease, it's very important to see a dietician so that you know what you can and can't eat and to make sure you're including sources of all the nutrients you need in your diet!

Aside from cooking gluten free food, I enjoy knitting, crocheting, reading, writing, swimming, running/walking, yoga, playing the violin, drawing with pastels, and dancing. I'm pretty good at some of those things and not-so-good at others, but I have fun with all of them. I'm starting medical school in a few weeks and I have a PhD in astronomy.