Gluten is a protein contained in grains such as wheat, rye, and barley. Many people cannot properly handle gluten as it travels through the small intestine. This condition is known as
Celiac Disease, which is an inherited autoimmune disorder. If you have Celiac Disease, read on since you need to be on a
gluten free diet, and manage your diet using MealMixer as a
Gluten Free Diet Planner.
As someone suffering with Celiac Disease, gluten will injure the lining of your small intestine, resulting in a number of symptoms including:
- weight loss
- bloating
- diarrhea
- gas (flatulence)
- abdominal cramps
- vitamin and mineral deficiency
When you eliminate gluten from your diet, you will allow the lining of your intestine to heal, and diminish these symptoms of Celiac Disease.
There are so many gluten containing grains that are used in formulating foods that it is very difficult to tell whether they contain gluten. MealMixer handles this for you. We also suggest you consider working with a dietitian using
MealMixer Professional so they can track your progress and help you stay on your life-long gluten free diet.
Oats are theoretically safe for Celiac patients since they do not naturally contain gluten.
However, they can be contaminated with gluten during the manufacturing process of producing oat-based flour, since they use the same equipment that processes wheat — even with the best manufacturing cleaning methods. Luckily there are a few manufacturers that do not cross contaminat. Note that most all Celiac patients can tolerate pure oat products, but in rare cases some may not. In this case you can configure your settings to avoid oats as well.
Using the planner will allow you to meet your dietary needs (specified by the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI's) of the Institute of Medicine).
Gluten-Free Living Tips
Beyond using the planner, you should make a point of reading labels carefully when you're not using a recommended brand to make sure there is no hidden gluten. Make sure they
don't contains wheat, rye, and barley. Watch out for words such as:
- Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein (HVP), unless you can determine they are made from soy or corn (the planner does this for you)
- Flour
- Cereal products unless they are based on pure forms of rice flour, corn flour, soy flour, or potato flour
- Malt or Malt Flavoring (unless it's corn-based)
- Vegetable Protein (unless they are soy or corn based)
- Modified Food Starch / Modified Starch — unless it's based on corn, arrowroot, tapioca, or potato
- Vegetable Gums that are not vegetable starch, cellulose gum, guar gum, gum arabic, carob bean gum, locust bean gum, gum aracia, gum tragacanth, or xanthan gum
- Soy Sauce
- stabilizers, flavorings, and emulsifiers — we've looked into these and the planner helps you avoid the products that use these items
As you can see the list is quite long. However, you can also see that there are a lot of
alternatives which include many items you're probably not used to eating, like buckwheat, millet, soybeans, tapioca, quinoa, arrowroot, carob, and amaranth. MealMixer will help you easily integrate these new grains into your diet plan, and keep out the grains that cause the symptoms of Celiac Disease.