It’s official. The doctor called with the results from my four year old’s endoscopy and she is gluten intolerant. I am grateful she does not have a more serious disorder. As anti-GMO as I have always been I feel woefully ignorant of the fact that basically gluten is a filler they’re putting in all our food. I don’t allow the wolfies or kitties to have any grain/fillers in their food! And yet here we’ve been chucking it down unwittingly all this time. I truly had no idea how prevalent it is. Again, I’m looking at this as a blessing in disguise. Our bodies weren’t meant to digest this and I’ve been speaking with more and more people who are refusing to eat gluten simply because they realize it is bad — not because they have any problems with it. So my little one and I were looking through the grocery store to see what we could eat and she was the one who asked about pretzels. I told her I had no idea but we could check. I immediately found these and could not believe it was gluten, dairy and egg free: the three things she cannot have. I did not even know it took eggs to make pretzels to begin with. We decided to break them open right there in the aisle and I prayed they wouldn’t taste like cardboard. I have never really yearned for pretzels and these are terrific! They taste so good it’s shocking. Christian novelist C.S. Lewis said, “Every disability conceals a vocation, if only we can find it, which will ‘turn the necessity to glorious gain.” I was elated for my little one and knew if we’d found this we would find other things. And we would be OK … perhaps even better than we were before.
I’m not gluten sensitive and don’t think gluten is innately bad . . . I buy my flour from a source in Montana that has not been modified. I am lucky that I don’t need to buy gluten free prepared products – but I have studied them and noticed that they are often high in salt. Foods naturally gluten free (fruit) are good for everyone and not sure if you cook much but there are flour substitutes for wheat based flours. If time permits that might be worth investigating. This website looks like a good source but really I don’t know much about it . .. just opinionated about what I do know. 🙂 http://www.wheat-free.org/wheat-free-gluten-free-alternative-flours.html
Thank you! I think more and more people are becoming gluten intolerant for a reason; it’s not natural. They’re using it as a binder also. Maybe as a preservative of sorts with your discovery it’s high in salt? Regardless, I am looking at it as a good change to make for our family.
I have read some things that indicate it might not be the gluten . .. it might be the pesticides. There is a link there. Wheat is natural and gluten is natural – but roundup – yuk. http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/maybe-you-arent-actually-gluten-intolerant-maybe-youre-just-poison-intolerant-11152014
Of course, I don’t know but suspect that might be what’s causing the problem. I make my own bread and buy some flour from Montana – non-GMO and organic.
But it’s the gluten free products that you have to watch out for as far as salt. Sometimes they add a lot of salt to make it taste better.
Actually it’s all the prepared snacks that tend to be high in salt . .. It’s not always possible but I’ve gotten to where I like to cook and bake so I can use the ingredients I want. There are some flours . .. buckwheat, amaranth, etc. that don’t have gluten.
More and more I realize France has got it right. Local, organic, non-GMO, and fresh. It’s great to cook but for those who don’t always have the time their restaurants adhere to the same philosophy. And they feed their left-over food to the homeless.