Dietary restrictions

Gearheadotaku wrote: ...and don't eat the sugar free gummy bears....

Or if you do, wear two Depends, right?

HiTempguy wrote: I'm not trying to be ignorant with this statement, but... This whole "gluten free"/"allergic to gluten" thing seems to be WAY overblown and a catchall. When I was growing up (I'm only 25), this was simply NOT a thing. Now everybody apparently has it, including my sister. It just seems to be the same thing as diagnosing everyone with ADD. I dunno, just kind of irritating. At the end of the day, even the best gluten free food tastes like garbage (its no different then people saying tofu can taste exactly the same as the real thing).

My sentiments exactly. I'm 41 and I've never heard of being gluten or wheat sensitive or allergic to it. Now if you fart and sneeze on the same day you can't eat wheat or eggs again and should think about changing your religion.
I'm not saying there's no such thing, but it just blows my mind. I guess that's one thing I'm struggling with. Two members of my family are allergic/sensitive to gluten/wheat (it'll be all of us by Wednesday, I'm convinced) now so I can't eat good food anymore unless I go out and pay way too much for a meal. But my wifes a good cook, so she'll figure it out. I like the idea of avoiding the types of food that are heavy in gluten.

DrBoost wrote:

HiTempguy wrote: I'm not trying to be ignorant with this statement, but... This whole "gluten free"/"allergic to gluten" thing seems to be WAY overblown and a catchall. When I was growing up (I'm only 25), this was simply NOT a thing. Now everybody apparently has it, including my sister. It just seems to be the same thing as diagnosing everyone with ADD. I dunno, just kind of irritating. At the end of the day, even the best gluten free food tastes like garbage (its no different then people saying tofu can taste exactly the same as the real thing).

My sentiments exactly. I'm 41 and I've never heard of being gluten or wheat sensitive or allergic to it. Now if you fart and sneeze on the same day you can't eat wheat or eggs again and should think about changing your religion. I'm not saying there's no such thing, but it just blows my mind. I guess that's one thing I'm struggling with. Two members of my family are allergic/sensitive to gluten/wheat (it'll be all of us by Wednesday, I'm convinced) now so I can't eat good food anymore unless I go out and pay way too much for a meal. But my wifes a good cook, so she'll figure it out. I like the idea of avoiding the **types** of food that are heavy in gluten.

It is just something people or doctors didn't use to look for and now that they do it is becoming more common. I used to think it was bull as well but have seen a lot of people that it has helped. I know a good number of those folks are seeing a placebo effect but who cares. It is harmless.

To look at it in another light. An allegory if you will.

I spent the better part of 14 years thinking I had severe IBS and the doctors kept treating me and told me they thought I had Crohn's disease. They put me on a lot of meds that never helped and were considering surgical methods. Then it all went away after changing a few things in my diet so I forgot about it until the new girlfriend happened and it came back with a vengeance. There just happens to be a lot of very common additives in processed foods and two of them Guar and Xanthan gum hit my gut like a martian death ray. I had been avoiding processed/boxed stuff but all gluten free baking mixes have it. My doctors never checked for it and acted like I was a holistic medicine taking, crystal wearing hippie when I told them. According to my Dr. there is no such thing as a Xanthan Gum sensitivity, but there are a lot of folks out there who have the same issues I did.

But folks have never heard of it before so we are just faking it right?

DrBoost wrote:

Gearheadotaku wrote: ...and don't eat the sugar free gummy bears....

Or if you do, wear two Depends, right?

Do they make tear-offs for underwear?

gotta love "franken-foods.

my wife has Celiac disease... so even a little gluten is a big deal :-/... there are decent options but it takes a while to figure them out... corn flakes makes a great subistute for crackers in meatloaf and is pretty good on baked chicken as well.

certain gluten free noodles are not to bad but do tend to require some changes on the side of moisture (thinking lasagna here)... when we have spaghetti she'll have it on spaghetti squash and the rest of the family will go with traditional noodles (although the spaghetti squash is good stuff)

for pizza night she has a crubled up couliflower crust that is the best "pizza dough" she's found...

in the end it's not all bad stuff... most GF breds are pretty meh... the biggest issue is how badly the US food industry marks gluten (it's got a nice label on them for gluten allergies in the europe)... things like soy sauce mean that most Asian cuisine is something that you can only cook at home... you have to be careful of sushi because the "krab" meat has gluten in it...

even with how common GF menus are at restaurants its still always a gamble... to most people ordering it because they are one of the GF bandwagon diets it doesn't really matter... but a little gluten can be a big issue but people don't notice it because the affects aren't the same as shellfish or nut allergies (the person with the allergy sure notices though)

Corn tortillas and rice noodles are awesome and I don't have any special dietary needs. Add your choice of meat to them and you're set. I think its a combination of doctors looking for it now like someone said and people that dont have problems but are just hypochondriacs. My friends nephew was 2-3 and was always colichy and kinda difficult, tested positive for celiacs and after just a few days it was a massive improvement. The kid was sleeping through the night on a regular basis now where before it was only every third night or so. Weather there is a recent rise in a root cause if it appearing is also another issue too.

I have a long lineage of European peasant farmer ancestry so I have the blessing/curse to eat large amounts of almost anything then wash it down with anything that has a proof. But I don't bag on anyone with medically restriced diets. Vegetarians and vegans are fair game for mocking though.

So what exactly happens if you eat Gluten and have an allergy? Is it just gastrointestinal issues or is it like turning red and windpipe swelling stuff?

From my understanding, the "allergy" and sensitivity are GI distress.

I'm personally convinced all the autoimmune disorders we see now, like Celiac and Crohns, are a result of being raised in an environment that is too clean for our own good, and overuse of antibiotics. Not enough invaders, and your body turns on itself.

bastomatic wrote: From my understanding, the "allergy" and sensitivity are GI distress. I'm personally convinced all the autoimmune disorders we see now, like Celiac and Crohns, are a result of being raised in an environment that is too clean for our own good, and overuse of antibiotics. Not enough invaders, and your body turns on itself.

That's what I have heard as well.

bastomatic wrote: From my understanding, the "allergy" and sensitivity are GI distress. I'm personally convinced all the autoimmune disorders we see now, like Celiac and Crohns, are a result of being raised in an environment that is too clean for our own good, and overuse of antibiotics. Not enough invaders, and your body turns on itself.

That, and we recognize and treat the problems well now, instead of "Billy was always a sickly child" or "We had eight kids, five lived past six months"

I'm allergic to corn, oats, mustard, peanuts and a couple more. I itch like crazy and get rashes in areas with sensitive skin. Lord help me if I'm sensitive to gluten as well, I wouldn't be able to eat anything.

I see vegan in your future

wbjones wrote: I see vegan in your future

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXhJPey3i_A

See what you can find about the paleo diet. It's basically lots of meat, lots of veggies, some fruit and no processed foods. There are a bunch of cookbooks and some good recipe web sites. As others have said, if you try to eat gluten free pizza and pasta and bread, you're going to be disappointed. Find some recipes that are inherently gluten free and it won't be a big deal making the switch.

Thanks guys, you were a lot of help. And I ain't going vegetarian. If we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made out of meat?

I hate hearing about it all the time ... but there's absolute validity to a lot of these intolerances. Remember the sugarless gummi bear thread? That's pretty much my life-long experience with a lot of foods. A few years ago, I cut out almost all processed food, and for the first time in my life, I don't have cramping and bloating and various other assorted unsavory symptoms. God, I love good bread, and if there's some wholesome looking seedy bread that doesn't look like it was extruded in a factory... I'll have a bit. Otherwise I stay away, because it's just not worth it. Especially while travelling – too much refined food and I'm lucky if I can get my shoes on after a flight. But yeah - pretty sick of people embracing gluten intolerance like it's the new alternative religion.

In reply to G8MikeGXP:

I'm always skeptical about that diet. Lots of meat sounds great, as does avoiding processed foods, but paleolithic people were not the paragons of health that paleo diet pushers claim they were. People rarely made it long enough to see their grand kids growing up. Good luck hitting 60. People did, but it wasn't common. The people making it to social-security age were in the neo-lithic period (or equivalent technology-wise). Neo-lithic people had agriculture and/or pastoralism with the Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest being an exception (TONS of fish and the environment sucks for farming). Not nearly as genetically modified (but certainly selectively bred) or overly processed as todays foods, though.

Check out this wikipedia description of a guy from 9,000 years ago " Kennewick Man had suffered from mild arthritis in one elbow, both knees and several vertebrae." He was 40-55 years old on death, one of the most elderly of the paleo-lithic skeletons. can you imagine being even 55 with that much arthritis? I bet you can, since people still get that today. There's a a neanderthal skeleton with arthritis far worse who wasn't older than 60 or so , possibly younger (PBS website claims 30-40, but my bio-anthro text book says 60 so I'm going with that). If you think you don't share anything in common with a neanderthal, think again: http://discovermagazine.com/2013/march/14-interbreeding-neanderthals#.UpD7wcSsh8E

I'm all for eating a ton of meat, though.

moparman76_69 wrote: So what exactly happens if you eat Gluten and have an allergy? Is it just gastrointestinal issues or is it like turning red and windpipe swelling stuff?

as I understand it from the Celiac side of things is that it causes the villi of the small intestine to become so inflamed that they can't absorb nutrition... the people that have it tend to have some pretty severe nutritional deficits which cause other health problems because of the lack of vitamins, minerals etc... my wife has some pretty bad issues with her teeth because of calcium issues :-/

Knurled wrote:

bastomatic wrote: From my understanding, the "allergy" and sensitivity are GI distress. I'm personally convinced all the autoimmune disorders we see now, like Celiac and Crohns, are a result of being raised in an environment that is too clean for our own good, and overuse of antibiotics. Not enough invaders, and your body turns on itself.

That, and we recognize and treat the problems well now, instead of "Billy was always a sickly child" or "We had eight kids, five lived past six months"

yup "failure to thrive" is now thought by some to be from gluten intolerance...