Going gluten-free has become somewhat of a fad these days. While some people are falsely under the impression that a gluten-free diet is the secret to weight loss, many people who follow a gluten-free diet for this reason have little knowledge about going on a gluten free diet or why, or about gluten in general.
Are you considering or already committed to a gluten-free lifestyle? Understanding the nuances of eliminating gluten from your diet can truly transform your health and well-being. In this comprehensive guide, we dive deep into everything you need to know about living gluten-free, from uncovering hidden sources of gluten to navigating the challenges of long-term avoidance. Whether you’re exploring gluten-free options due to celiac disease, gluten sensitivity
, or simply aiming for a healthier diet, this article provides practical tips, insightful articles on gluten’s impact on health, and mouthwatering gluten-free recipes to empower your journey.
Wheat has been a staple in the diets of many people I’ve worked with as a naturopath. It’s an affordable, nutritious (especially wholemeal), versatile, and delicious food. The unique property of wheat flour, when mixed with liquid, forms an elastic dough perfect for baking. It’s also commonly used to thicken, smooth, and bind various dishes. While most people consume wheat in bread and baked goods, it’s surprising how many products, including packaged desserts and even toothpaste, contain wheat flour.
Despite its controversial reputation, wheat is nutritious, providing essential carbohydrates, protein, B vitamins, minerals like iron, and dietary fiber. Bread alone can contribute significantly to daily protein intake.
However, many people feel better after going gluten-free or living a gluten-free lifestyle. They’re often unaware that they’re still consuming small amounts of wheat, and thus gluten, through trace contamination. Given the widespread use of gluten, it’s nearly impossible to avoid it entirely. However, significantly reducing gluten intake by avoiding obvious sources like bread and pasta can noticeably improve digestive health for many.
– Celiac Disease Explained
– Effective Treatments for Celiac Disease
– Mastering Gluten-Free Baking
– Transitioning to a Wheat and Gluten-Free Diet
– Navigating Celiac Disease and Gluten-Free Living
– Understanding Gluten and Gluten Intolerance
– Delicious Gluten-Free Bread and Pizza Base Recipes
Leaky Gut Syndrome might be the culprit if you feel better without gluten but don’t have celiac disease. My theory is that people feel better not just from avoiding gluten but also from eliminating other problematic foods like margarine, peanut butter, and chocolate spread. Commercial bread, in particular, is loaded with additives and preservatives. Avoiding these along with wheat can make a significant difference, although the exact role of gluten remains debated. If avoiding gluten helps you feel better, it might be worth continuing. Once your leaky gut heals, you might tolerate occasional gluten without issues.
Long-term avoidance of wheat and gluten can lead to increased sensitivity, causing discomfort upon reintroduction. It’s essential to understand whether your symptoms are due to an allergy or intolerance to gluten.
Allergy and intolerance are often confused. For clarity, explore my detailed article on Food Allergies and Intolerances.
To maintain a gluten-free lifestyle, avoid ingredients like:
– Wholewheat or “wholegrain”
– Wheat flour and starch
– Wheat protein and germ
– Edible starch and thickening agents
– Gluten-free wheat starch (often not entirely gluten-free)
– Rusk, bran, and bran derivatives
– Starch and cornflour (cornstarch)
Rye, barley, oats, and rice can be easily contaminated with wheat during processing. If you have severe wheat allergies, it’s safer to avoid these grains. Even rice flour labeled “wheat-free” might carry some risk.
Avoiding wheat contamination at home is challenging. Wheat flour can become airborne and stick to various surfaces. If you’re strictly gluten-free, it’s best to keep your kitchen free of wheat flour and related products. Pay attention to common kitchen items like toasters and utensils to prevent cross-contamination.
For a gluten-free diet, avoid:
– Baked beans in sauce (canned)
– Baking powder and batter mixes
– Biscuits, biscuit mixes, and breadcrumbs
– Breakfast cereals, cakes, and cake mixes
– Cereals, cheaper chocolates, chutneys, and cocoa
– Instant coffee, cornflour (cornstarch), and crispbread
– Crumbling topping mixes and curry powder
– Custard (powder or ready-made), gravy powder, and mixes
– Ice cream, macaroni, mustard, and oat porridge
– Oatmeal, pancake mixes, pastry mixes, and pasta
– Pickles, pies, fillings, porridge, and salad dressings
– Sandwich spreads, sauces, sausages, soups (tinned or packets)
– Soy sauce, spaghetti, and stock cubes
Adopting a gluten-free lifestyle doesn’t mean giving up enjoyable foods or spending excessive time cooking. With good information, creativity, and a little effort, you can easily prepare delicious gluten-free meals. Explore our gluten-free recipes for inspiration and guidance.
You don’t need to be gluten intolerant or have celiac disease to benefit from a gluten-free diet. Many of my healthiest clients choose to avoid gluten by choice. While I am not gluten intolerant, I personally avoid wheat products, including bread, biscuits, and baked goods, and have noticed significant improvements in my digestive health. You may like to read our What Is Gluten and Gluten Intolerance article.
To understand the difference, I recommend that you read our page on Food Allergies and Food Intolerances. Food allergies can be outgrown at any point over the course of your lifetime, but that is not always the case with gluten-related disorders, especially if you are born a celiac, then you will need to avoid gluten for life.
Gluten is complex protein made up of a number of smaller components, including the simple protein, gliadin. Gliadin is often considered the toxic component of gluten because research suggests that it is one big cause of intestinal damage in the Western world where so much gluten and wheat products are consumed. If you are gluten intolerant and your body does not process gliadin normally and you consume a food or drink containing gluten, your immune system will view gliadin as if it were an invading foreign body. In response, your immune system will mount an aggressive attack by creating specific antibodies to fight against it. These antibodies then wage a war of sorts with the gliadin present in your body by producing chemical messengers themselves, and one of the symptoms created for example can be inflammation, resulting in abdominal pain. The end result of this internal attack over an extended period of time is potentially a lot of damage to your intestinal tract and affecting even other parts of your body such as your brain or neurological system.
Simply put, if you have celiac disease, your body treats gluten as harmful, which leads to inflammation and irritation. The lining of the small intestine may becomes damaged and, as many nutrients are absorbed in this way, this can lead to deficiencies in minerals and other nutrients. Celiac disease requires you to eat gluten free and it affects children and adults, and often runs in families.
If you are a true celiac (diagnosed by way of a small intestine biopsy, not just a blood antibody test), consuming items that contain even traces gluten can cause a multitude of serious and lasting health problems. The most common ailments associated with these conditions center around the digestive system and may include intestinal ulcers and lesions, bloating, gas, diarrhoea or constipation and abdominal pain. Other well-documented physical problems associated with gluten consumption include significant weight loss, chronic fatigue, iron-deficiency anaemia, osteoporosis (thinning or brittle bones), migraine headaches and mood disorders such as depression and irritability.
Gluten sensitivity or celiac’s disease can only be managed by avoiding gluten in all forms. This can be difficult. For many, the only real option is to avoid gluten on a lifelong basis. You will absolutely need to embrace a gluten-free lifestyle! Family meals need to be adapted, and eating with friends and in restaurants can be hard, so sticking to a totally gluten-free diet needs perseverance and encouragement. For example, a dietitian can help you to adapt without missing out on necessary nutrients.
Gluten is a protein found in wheat, and similar proteins are found in barley, rye and oats, so the obvious sources of gluten are baked goods, containing wheat flour. This includes bread, cakes, pastries, biscuits, puddings and pies made with pastry. Rye is sometimes used in bread, and barley is often used in brewing which means that beer is off limits. The jury is out on the subject of oats, but individual reactions differ and there is also the risk that cross-contamination of oats with flour may have occurred during the processing.
Baking goods are the most obvious source of gluten, but it is also often used in processed foods where flour is used as a binder, filler or processing aid. Wheat starch is processed to remove the protein, but it still contains some traces of gluten as it is not possible to remove all protein. Specially manufactured wheat starch, produced to a different specification, is used in gluten-free processed foods. When flour is used as a processing aid, or as part of another compound, it does not have to be declared on the label. If in doubt check with the manufacturer, or with the Food List of the Celiac Society
Chocolate Stock cubes Potato chips Creamed coconut
Mincemeat Breadcrumbs Baking powder Soy sauce
Spices Sausages Mustard
People who wish to eat gluten free are often concerned that there are not many foods they can eat that are completely gluten free. But there are, there are many choices. These are some of the foods that are naturally gluten free: meats, fish, eggs, cheese, milk, fruit and vegetables. What you do need to be careful of is cross-contamination of these foods which may occur during processing, so you will need to be particularly careful of these foods in their processed forms like meatballs or crumbed fish for example. Wheat products are often used as fillers, binders or coatings on processed foods so my advice is to carefully read the labels, ask the shopkeeper and if in doubt call the manufacturer.
The chemical structure of gluten is what gives baked goods in particular their distinct flavor and agreeable texture. Can you remember the last time you were kneading dough, and it had that spongy, stringy texture? The bread became a lot more elastic after a certain period of time, this is due to the strands of gluten (a protein found in wheat) becoming more stretched and drawn out. During the baking process, the elasticity of the gluten becomes soft and springy. This is the big problem with gluten-free baking, you simply can’t recreate this agreeable texture, but you don’t have to – there are many agreeable alternatives to wheat flour and the gluten it contains. And after awhile, you don’t really miss this texture, you become accustomed to gluten free options because you know how good you feel for making this choice.
Did you know that there are many wheat/gluten free flour options available to you? Here is an all-purpose gluten free flour which you can simply use to substitute ordinary wheat flour in just about any recipe you are following. You will need to vary the amounts of the different flours to taste, for example, the potato flour will give a more “earthy” flavour which is great for savoury dishes, so increase potato flour if you want this taste. Rice flour will make a lighter flour, so experiment with different blends until you find the right proportions of each to suit your taste.
There are different options open to you if you want to create gluten-free thickeners. For example when thickening stir-fry sauces, basic white sauces and soups, I can recommend that you try to use tapioca starch or arrowroot starch (mix it with a little cool water or rice milk first before adding it to sauces). Arrowroot starch works well for gravies served right away. Cornstarch, like potato starch, can also tend to become sticky or gluey. I have made a nice roux (that nice thick white sauce) using rice flour, but you can try any basic rice flour or even a gluten free pancake or cake mix. You may want to avoid bean or soy flour, they have too strong a taste.
Understanding how gluten impacts health is crucial, but for those seeking alternatives, practical recipes are just as important. Here is a breadcrumb recipe that is somewhat unconventional but very tasty.
Ingredients:
– 6 toasted gluten-free sandwich slices
– Dried herbs or your favourite seasoning
– Olive oil or melted butter
Instructions:
1. Use a Vita Mix to process the toasted gluten-free sandwich slices into crumbs.
2. Add dried herbs or your favourite seasoning.
3. Drizzle with olive oil or melted butter.
4. Pulse for just a few seconds at a time.
This mixture is very yummy, crunchy, and turns golden when baked. Processing chunks of your favourite toasted gluten-free bread also works. For crunchy toppings, try crumbled corn tortilla chips, rice chips, or potato chips. Failed gluten-free breads can be processed into crumbs and frozen for later use. Note that adding dried herbs and seasonings gives gluten-free bread crumbs a big flavor boost. While some advocate processing cornflakes or gluten-free cereal into crumbs, I find it gives the recipe an unpleasant breakfast cereal taste.
Ingredients:
– Rice flour
– Potato flour
– Buckwheat flour
– Maize flour
Instructions:
1. Combine the flours to achieve the desired consistency for your recipes.
With many recipes, you will not find it easy to replace wheat flour with a substitute. The right choice depends on whether you need a thickening agent, a bulking agent, or flour to add texture. Through trial and error, you can find the best combination for your needs. Each flour has a unique taste and texture, and blending different flours can improve both.
Produces an earthy yet slightly sour taste, great for pancakes and pasta. Here is a great buckwheat pancakes recipe for you!The other thing you can do successfully with the unique taste and texture of buckwheat flour is to make pasta from it. Try store bought pasta and see what I mean, it tastes great.
Known as Besan or gram flour, ideal for batters and fritters.
The primary use of this flour is to use it to make batters or for fritters. You can also mix it successfully with other flours in baking. I have used Besan flour extensively in Indian cooking, incorporating it into batters to coat cauliflower and onion rings before deep frying. Very tasty!
Bland, possible Allergant to some
Corn flour is a very bland flour, but I find that it mixes successfully with rice flour to give it more body. You may need to be careful of corn flour, as some people have allergies to corn protein.
Offers good flavor and texture, suitable for bread making and thickening soups.
This is a good flour to use in terms of flavor and texture. It is made from cooked, dried and then finely ground potatoes. It can be used successfully in bread making when it has been mixed with other flours such as rice flour. Potato flour can help to produce a moist and nicely flavoured bread. I use it for thickening soups or gravies mainly.
Bland taste, versatile for many applications, available in white or brown varieties.
Rice flour also has a bland taste, but it is an all-purpose flour that can be used for many applications. You can get rice flour in either a white or brown variety. This is a nice flour with which to make muffins with, you can make bread with rice flour but you will find that the texture is more dense than using wheat flour. A good flour to mix with corn flour or buckwheat flour. Rice flour is also good when used as a thickener.
Strong flavor, best mixed with other flours, adds moistness and protein to baked goods.
Soy flour is not for everybody, is has a very characteristic and a rather strong flavour. I like the taste of soy, but find that not many do. This flour can be quite overpowering so it is best mixed in with other flours, used sparingly and in small amounts. It adds a moistness to baked goods and is a good source of protein.
By understanding the properties of these flours and experimenting, you can create delicious gluten-free baked goods that meet your taste and texture preferences. Enjoy your gluten-free lifestyle.