Natural Foods and Label Reading

The most overwhelming part of going gluten free is trying to figure out what to do first. There's gluten in an awful lot of products, the obvious ones being pasta, bread, pizza crusts, and cereal. There's also gluten most soy sauces and other Asian sauces, condensed soups, boullion and off-the-shelf gravies just to name a few. It's staggering to think about going gluten free and realizing that most everything in your pantry can no longer be used in meal making.

When people ask me about what to do first when converting to the GF lifestyle, I tell them that the best advice I ever read was to first focus on foods that are naturally gluten free. This includes meat, eggs, cheese, nuts, fruits, potatoes, vegetables, rice and dairy. (Some people with Celiac disease also have trouble with dairy, but I'm concentrating on eliminating gluten.) I mainly shop the outsides of the grocery store. Sounds easy enough, but we all need seasonings and flavorings too, right? And won't we prefer some salad dressing on our salads? This is where you'll need to become your own detective and read food labels like you're searching for hidden treasure.

This label reading is tricky business sometimes. If the label lists wheat, then that's obvious. But if one of the ingredients is soy sauce, then isn't that safe? Well, probably not. Most soy sauces contain wheat. (There is a wheat-free soy sauce available at the grocery stores and it's easy to find.) Some manufacturers really help us out and will list any possible allergens, such as wheat. But often gluten may be cleverly disguised as "artificial flavors". That's where it's really tricky. I had a bag of frozen cauliflower with cheese sauce in my freezer. I typically don't buy stuff like that, but I had it in there for an emergency side dish. I checked the label and there was no mention of wheat or gluten, so we had it with dinner. I was not a happy camper the next day when the glutenization hit. (You'll find I will make up a lot of words that you won't find in dictionaries.)

If you see something on a label that seems suspicious and you're just not sure, I would suggest calling the manufacturer or checking online. Of course when you're at the grocery store, trying to get home to make dinner, you may not have time at that particular moment to whip out your cell phone and make some calls. That's where pre-planning comes in but that's a subject for another post.

So in summary, focus on naturally gluten free foods first, and check labels carefully. The label checking will get easier as you find tasty GF alternative products. And if you do get accidentally glutenized by a disguised incredient, you'll know to take that off the list of foods in your house. I guarantee, there will never be another bag of frozen cauliflower with cheese sauce in my freezer again!

Thanks for joining me on The Ali Way to GF Goodness!