Among the various chronic diseases that people are inflicted with, there is one called celiac disease. In order to understand this disease, one needs to understand what is gluten? Gluten is basically a kind of protein found in a lot of everyday things like barley, wheat and rye. Besides these three, you would find gluten in many other foods and medicines. Foods like cookies, soy sauce, cereal, alcoholic beverages contain gluten in a substantial amount as well. Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder when your small intestines aren’t capable of processing gluten and their digestive system reacts adversely to gluten. In order to control celiac disease, one needs to completely eliminate gluten from their diets and keep it that way. For those who might be recently diagnosed with this disease might be deterred and nervous about how to keep themselves gluten-free. What foods to eliminate from their shopping list, what things to include and what substitutes they can find. Below are some tips that would certainly help you build your gluten-free lifestyle.
1. Reach for the Substitutes and enjoy what’s Gluten-Free
There are some delicious and crispy goods like crackers, pasta and bread that contain gluten but that does not mean you can’t enjoy these foods anymore. All you need to do is find gluten-free substitutes of these same foods which can easily be found at supermarkets and health food stores as well. Also, you need to remember that a lot of foods are naturally gluten-free that you can include in your meals on daily basis. These include eggs, cheese, meat, poultry fish and vegetables as well.
2. Read What You Buy
Develop of habit of reading the bags of what food you are buying. All he foods come with allergen labelling which mean you can read and decide if a product is gluten-free or not. Just go through the ingredient list before you procure something and if you find wheat, spelt, rye, oats or barley in it, then don’t buy it.
3. Gluten-Free Grains and Alcohol
Even though you might think that you can’t consume any sort of grain or alcohol, there are some that are gluten-free and still edible or drinkable for you. Among the diversity of grains, you can still eat corn, millet, buckwheat, polenta, amaranth, teff and quinoa because all of these grains are naturally gluten-free but you still need to be careful that you are using a version that’s not contaminated. When it comes to Alcohol, you need to remember that beer, ales, lagers and stouts have different amount of gluten in them which makes these alcoholic beverages pernicious for your digestive system while wine, liqueurs sherry, port and cider are gluten-free which makes them a good choice for you. Gluten-free beer is also available at some restaurants and supermarkets just ensure that the label says it is gluten free.
4. Avoid Sauces and Prevent Contamination
There are a lot of condiments, sauces, gravies and stocks that contain gluten for they have ingredients like wheat flour. You should try making your own sauces just in order to avoid this kind of hazard. Also you need to be vigilant how you store your gluten-free food because it can easily be contaminated by other foods and even a small amount of gluten can cause a lot of pain. Do this by keeping all your plates and food separate. Try using separate butters, spreads and jams and especially keep your gluten-free bread separately.