quick and dirty gluten free: part 1

Also part one of what I'm sure will be my "Cassidy shouldn't be allowed to title blog posts after 8pm" series. Whatever. 

I've said this a million times and I'm sure I'll say it a million more: I'm gluten free. I've been a diagnosed Celiac since just before my 5th birthday, and I'm closing in on 22, which means that for the past 17 years, I've been a gluten free kid.

Cool. 

We've come a long way from Fritos and rice cakes. It's not easy, I know, but I'm going to try to make this a little easier. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I'm going to try to break this down in the easiest way possible, but I recognize that it's a lot of information and also really overwhelming. Please note that I'm by no means an expert in this field. I take care of myself. You should take care of yourself. Consult a doctor. All that jazz. This is just to help people understand the diet and not make the rookie mistakes that I made. Okay? Okay. 

Let's go. 

Step one: Stop eating gluten. 

Okay, okay, I realize that's easier said than done. But really, that's step one. 

First, what IS gluten? Gluten is a protein in wheat, barley, and rye. Right away, that means these three very popular grains are off limits. 

Rule out oats too, because they're highly cross contaminated (same fields, same trucks, all that jazz). Note: they do have gluten free oats. Those are fine. 

Also note: there is no such thing as gluten free wheat. That's not a thing. (I haven't ever SEEN that, but you know. Just covering the bases.) 

So, okay, no chewing on wheat stalks. No barley soup or rye bread. 

Wheat goes by other names too, like durum, kamut, semolina, spelt, and triticale... just to name a few.  

Don't get overwhelmed yet. It's okay. 

First, start by opening your cabinet. Any (regular) bread? It probably has wheat. Don't eat it. Same goes for cookies and pasta. 

Now. Take something like waffles, pop tarts, or a box of (regular) rice krispies (the ones in the blue box). Look at the ingredients. In the main ingredients list, you should see "wheat flour". You should also see, at the end of the ingredients list, the bolded phrase "contains: wheat". That automatically means you cannot eat it. Wheat is one of the top 8 allergens, which means companies are legally required to label the products that contain it. 

Fun fact: these three items almost surely contain gluten. They do, however, have gluten free varieties of all three. So there's that silver lining. 

I'm going to do a series of posts that are basically grocery shopping hauls, for lack of a better term. You know how fashion and beauty bloggers do a "what's in my purse"? Well, I'm going to do a "what's in my grocery basket" - along with why I'm eating it and how I found out it was gluten free. I'll use brand names and where I bought it and if it's good. It's not to help companies. It's to help you. 

So okay, we've got the wheat part down (or at least started, which will do for now). So what about oats, barley, and rye? 

READ THE INGREDIENTS. That's the first thing to do. 

If you're still unsure, call the company or google it. Try to stick to their website for accuracy reasons, but if a celiac forum post from the past year says that they contacted the company, you can use your discretion to decide whether or not you want to chance it. 

Sometimes a product will say gluten free and you'll be really happy. I'll talk about that later. 

Sometimes a product will say processed in a facility that also manufactures wheat or something like that. We'll talk about that later, too. 

Right now, your homework is to cut out everything that straight up contains gluten. If you live by yourself, actually throw this stuff out or give it away. Seriously. I don't care if you paid 20 bucks for a package of cookies. If you can't have gluten, and they do, then you can't have those cookies. 

If you don't live by yourself, then make sure everything is labeled. In my house, everything is gluten free UNLESS it's labeled (NOT GF). When we started, we labeled the gluten free stuff and that's what I ate. Some people do colored dots. Some people have different shelves. Do whatever works for you. Just do something.