I didn't know that about the lip balm Ian. Wow! And I totally agree with you re avoiding rather than attempting to replace. And as 'she who does the shopping' that is going to be the way we go!
I would suggest that if you can't eat gluten you should be avoiding those foods rather than buying a gluten-free equivalent. You can find recipes that use things like almond flour or any of a number of other flours in place of wheat flour; the problem is that those can work out pretty expensive compared with the wheat-based equivalents. If your problem is serious enough then you may be better off with radical changes in diet to more or less eliminate wheat completely, but that's far easier said than done.
Gluten is a particular problem because after digestion it produces proteins that (a) make your gut leaky, thereby allowing all kinds of large molecules into the bloodstream that have no right to be there (hence the auto-immune issues), and (b) bind to the same receptors in the brain that normally take opiates. So there's a direct more-ish effect from gluten, not to the extent of opium of course, but the effect is there, perhaps explaining why gluten is so widely used. In lip balm, for example. It's really astounding the number of products that contain it, and of course the companies that develop these products do these things for a reason. :-(
I certainly find Leclerc good value compared to other big supermarkets for these types of foods. Certainly chepaer than the specialist or Bio shos.
Be careful though, the replacement biscuits, breads etc. can be surprisingly yummy and moreish - because they are laden with sugar to make up for the other ingrédients!!
Thanks to you all for the excellent information, lots to research. I was told today tha Leclerc have an excellent and cheap selection of wheat/gluten/dairy free replacements.
Do you recommend anywhere to shop for these things?
Hi James,
I have been allergic to dairy produce since birth although was not diagnosed correctly until I was 10. I generally substitute with soya milk and cream or coconut milk, using them as I would regular milk when required in cooking. Soya yoghurts and caramel / chocolate flavour puddings are now quite widely available in supermarkets and health food stores (if you have one within range). Check out the Soyasun website.
I agree that giving up wheat is much harder as we are so programmed to eat it these days! However, I became totally carbohydrate intolerant 8 years ago (severe IBS type syptoms) and even small amounts of any type of flour are out of the question as well as rice, potatoes, raw vegetables, fruit, juices etc.
Once I got through the initial adjustment phase (a couple of weeks), I found that I had bags of energy, better sleep and dropped 24 kilos quite naturally over a 2 year period. All whilst enjoying unlmimited amounts of meat, fish, cooked vegetables and ingeniously created recipes using substitutes, including muffins and puddings.
American websites tend to be far more advanced on the issue and some have some amazing dairy free and/or gluten free and low-carb recipes. We make everything fresh now - even our ketchup which is made from tomato paste and a few other ingrédients. It takes just 3 mins to make a whole batch. So if I want something particular I just Google it and ususally come up with a good response!
Best of luck, keep at it.
Danielle
My daughter is allergic to raw fruit and vegetables. She started to itch in her mouth when she ate salad and tomatoes at age 9 and gradually it spread to all raw fruit and veg. She can have a swollen and itchy mouth from a few sprinklings of parsley as a garnish and her internat called the on-call doctor after she did a Zumba class after her evening meal. Vegetables cooked lightly or stirfried to crunchy, sorbets and mango in some prepacked (I suppose pasturised) fruit juices will swell her mouth/throat and cause stomach pains. Now honey and also a strong cheese fondu will have her rushing for the solupred.
Its called Oral Allergy Syndrome and in her case it is to do with the body's histamines attacking the proteins in the food. Her get around is to cook everything thoroughly, pick out the crudités and garnishes in everthing and long to be able to crunch an apple or climb the cherry tree in search of juicy snacks.
She also complains that rice gives her stomach ache after she ate rice and eggs on a school trip to Spain - both she and her room mate from the same famille d'accueil had stomach ache on the return home. I don't know if the rice stomach ache is in her head or real as although I know bacteria in rice can cause poisoning, I thought that rice itself was pretty much OK in terms of tolerance.
Hi James,
First, I have had to cater for people with all sorts of dietary restrictions in my business, gluten-free on several occasions and dairy-free, as well as having had a son who was dairy-free for the first 10 years of his life. There are lots of products you can buy that help replace the products you can't have but it starts with a lot of label reading because you will be amazed at what contains gluten and/or dairy that you didn't think would!
Try asking your local Boulanger if he does a gluten-free bread ... mine does, but you have to order the day before ... and a coeliac guest said it was the best gluten-free bread he had ever eaten!
I also make a wonderful dessert, recipe discovered online, just search for gluten-free chocolate pear cake. It calls for butter and chocolate, both of which could, I guess, be replaced by dairy-free equivalents. A decent plain chocolate should be dairy-free anyway (as a child, my son was severely allergic to dairy and could eat Bourneville ... and, weirdly, After Eight mints!)
Second point; as an ex-nurse and first aid instructor, many people say they have a food allergy when what they actually have is a food intolerance. Medically, they are different reactions. I say this, simply because a) allergy testing won't necessarily show that you have a food intolerance and b) with a food intolerance your reaction may be unpleasant and unwanted but not necessarily life-threatening (although coeliac's can be), whereas a severe allergy carries the risk of anaphylaxis and therefore is seriously life-threatening.
I have a food intolerance to red meat. I used to suffer dreadfully with what was diagnosed as Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Then one day, a friend told me that giving up eating meat would "cure it". I was sceptical but my stepson is vegetarian and was coming to stay for two weeks so I decided to eat vegetarian with him and see what happened. After just a fortnight, I was symptom free and feeling better than I had in years. I asked my GP about it and he suggested reintroducing ONE thing at a time, then wait a few days, to test what was actually responsible. I very quickly narrowed it down to beef, pork, lamb, goat and duck ... meaning I can now eat chicken turkey, fish and shellfish, all of which I would have avoided unnecessarily had I not tested them.
I've told you this long story just as a suggestion to you that, maybe, after discussion with your GP, you might find it worth avoiding all dairy and gluten for a period then try reintroducing ONE thing at a time ... your body will soon tell you if it is a problem! (e.g. are you actually dairy intolerant or just lactose intolerant? There is a difference) But if you DO have a serious allergy, then DON'T do this as the allergic reaction can get worse after a period of non-contact.
As for craving the foods you can't have? Yes, I went through a period of withdrawal and cravings (bacon sandwiches and roast lamb especially!) but you adjust over time and I no longer have cravings ... in fact, the smell of bacon cooking makes me feel queasy now!
I hope this long screed might have been of some help! Sorry to waffle on!
Wendy
Hi Sue
That sounds interesting, would you be able to expand up on your services here in this post please?
Thanks
James
I am trained in hair analysis to test for allergies, deficiencies and allied health problems using radionics - if you are interested to know more please let me have your email address and I will send you details.
I got into this kind of thing a little while ago partly because I wanted to control my own weight, and partly to see if it could help my wife who had tried all kinds of things but has difficulty with losing any. Neither of us are in serious problem territory, but I thought it was worth a try.
So I stopped being a regular at the baker, and haven't bought a baguette in six months. We also try to reduce carbohydrates as much as we can, though we still eat rice or potatoes fairly frequently, and sometimes pasta. We also increased the fat we eat, using cocunut oil and natural animal fats in the meat we eat. My weight has dropped from 89 kilos to about 82 where it has stabilised. My wife still has not moved much, but she does notice that eating bread gives her some problems, feeling bloated and so on. However, she has not yet taken the plunge and eliminated dairy - and that's where I suspect part of her problem lies. That's the next target, I'd be interested to hear how you get on.
I did read up a lot on wheat and gluten, and gluten in particular does seem to have a number of nasty consequences for the body. I have a lot of time for the theory that while celiac is at the extreme end of the gluten sensitivity spectrum that there are probably lots of people who have varying degrees of sensitivity. It seems to be this aspect of wheat that does most harm, though there's also the high sugar content of wheat since we are able to metabolise the main carbohydrate in wheat (amylopectin-a) very rapidly into glucose. A very interesting topic, this.
You could go and look at the Wheat Belly web site, and/or watch some of the videos on YouTube by Dr William Davis.
Don't know if I am allergic but have just stopped eating wheat this last month and I feel so much better generally. Has cleared up headaches and digestive problems. Will be interesting to read what other people say.
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A friend of mine after much research on himself found only mass produced bread gave him issues, He switched to baking his own sour dough products and hasn't suffered in 12 years. Yes f course listen to the GP but also maybe worth a try if your condition isn't life threatening as Doctors do like to get you labelled quickly to keep things all nice and tidy.
Mass produce flour has a range of improvers added to speed up the profit process (does nothing for the bread)
Please do, although I'm not allowed dairy either so I can't put any cheese on it!
The fact that you are craving bread tells me that you do have either an allergy or an intolerance.
It can be either the wheat itself or the yeast in the bread that affects you. You need to take bread out of your diet for at least a month, but you may see a difference before this.
Some allergies can be noticed whilst intolerance is more difficult as the problem builds up without you really noticing.
My daughter used to have eat rice cakes.
A good friend of mine has coeliac disease & spelt is a no-no for her, rye & oats as well & wheat, obviously. You will be OK with rice, millet, sarrasin, chestnut, maize, teff, quinoa and probably others. There's a new gluten-free bread out you would never know was gluten-free, her husband told me about it the other day - I'll get him to tell me again as I've forgotten what it is ;-)
my grand daughter has a gluten allegy and my daughter can find lots of products in the super markets and Monoprix sells bread sans gluten and Naturalia If you are near Paris even marks and Spencer have a very good range but I think most of these breads are made out of Rice flour
In the 1970s I had a vegetable allergy, mainly lettuce, believe it or not! One cheese and lettuce sandwich was enough to give me severe urticaria almost all over my body and my lips would swell up, the next morning. I rang in sick on those days! This lasted for over a year and I waited 6 months for a London hospital appointment to see the only allergy specialist around at the time in the UK, and was given the standard skin prick allergy test, with negative results. The allergy worked its way out eventually on its own without any treatment except antihistamine.
Years before this lettuce allergy, I passed by an allergy clinic near to where I lived and worked in Islington London. I wasnât aware of any allergies at that time so went in out of curiosity.
On a table were a fair number of identical small brown bottles. Each anonymous bottle was numbered, and inside them were a range of commonly known allergenics.
I was told to pick up any bottle with my right hand and press it against my forehead, with my left arm outstretched with the therapistâs hand pressing down on my left wrist, with me pressing up so that our arms remained in a firm & steady horizontal balance.
Nothing happened with the first few bottles until all strength in my left arm suddenly vanished, and fell to my side while pressing a particular bottle to my forehead. My arm really had lost all strength and I momentarily had no control of it at all. Several arm collapses later the numbers on those guilty bottles were looked at on a list, and I was supposedly allergic to cheese, cat hair and red wine, I think, and some others which I forget. Long time ago.
Looked this method up on the internet today and found only a couple of videos using this technique to find out what foods are good or bad for you - kinesiology muscle testing for food allergies. Tried it myself today using a heavy weight outstretched in my left hand and picked up several foods but didnât feel any loss of strength in my left arm.
Am I wasting my time with this?
I became severely allergic to tinned tuna fish after eating a salade niçoise on a BF ferry crossing about 20years ago now. Woke up in the night with a very swollen green tongue and sore lips and thought nothing of it. Next time I had a tuna mayo sandwich it happened again and was told not to risk it again in case my tongue blocked my throat and I havnât but I have to inspect manufactured fish products to check no added tuna. I really miss those sandwiches, salmon isnât the same and far too expensive now.
It should occur to everyone with a food alergy that you have a less than optimum gut microbiome.
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Agreed. But also there are certain foodstuffs (eg milk, soy products that are not fermented) that are not digestible for some genetic types and should not be part of an adult diet. Also, there are food processes which actually harm our digestive systems - eg the Chorleywood process in the bread making industry.