When Eating Gluten Free might not be so Helpful After All

Going gluten free is all the rage now. Everyone knows someone who is gluten free or has celiac or someone who is thinking they should go gluten free.   There are more and more doctors and naturopaths and chiropractors who are telling their patients they should be gluten free. And in many many situations there are great improvements in those who do make that choice. GI problems calm down, migraines resolve, eczema clears. But sometimes the problems do not go away or sometimes the person almost feels worse.

Photo by asgw at Flickr

Sometimes when someone goes gluten free they simply replace all their favorite gluten products with gluten free versions.  So bread becomes a gluten free bread made by Udi’s or Rudi’s and bagels become gluten free bagels. Crackers are gluten free crackers made with starch and a bit of flour. Cookies and cakes and brownies and donuts are replaced by a gluten free version made with rice flour or tapoica starch or corn flour or some other alternative. Believe me I have been there and done that. I was grasping at trying to keep life as normal as possible. And some of those products taste reasonably good.  But have you looked at the label to see what is really in them?

Tonight for a treat we had gluten free pizza made from Schar,  GF pizza crusts which I picked up at the discount grocery for 75 cents for 2. I figured we could deviate a bit from our regular fare and have some GF pizza. (Normally I would make a sourdough pizza crust and use that.)  It actually was rather tasty and we enjoyed our supper along with roasted cauliflower and sauteed spinach. But when I looked at the label to see what was in my pizza I was once again glad that we don’t usually eat this way.

Here are the ingredients:

• water
• cornstarch
• rice flour
• potato starch
• corn syrup
• yeast
• guar gum
• mono and diglycerides
• cream of tartar
• baking soda
• milk protein
• salt
• Tartaric acid
• citric acid
• natural flavor

Now tell me what if anything is that list is nutritious.   Yup, exactly what I thought….Nothing. There are 29 g of carbohydrates and 2 grams of protein. There is .5 g of fat and no cholesterol. There are 200 mg of sodium. There is no vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, or iron. That is what I can learn off the label. If you begin to look there is very little nutrition in most commercial baked goods that are GF (not much in non GF baked good either but that is the subject of a different post.). 

If you want to get some nutritional value out of your GF baked goods you really need to make them yourself.  And this is where I put in my plug for sourdough. You use whole grains to make sourdough and they actually have some vitamins and minerals in them plus they are fermented by the sourdough medium so are readily useable in your body. (See my post on why I love sourdough so much.)

And most Americans really need to eat more fruits and vegetables.  I am finding now that my family is mostly GF we eat more vegetables. We have always liked them and eaten some at every dinner but now we are eating twice as much as before. I am finding the downside to that is expense and needing to go shopping more often to keep supplied. Vegetables and fruits are some of the healthiest things we can put into our bodies especially if they are organic or at least chem free. That of course comes by sourcing them from local places where you can know your famer and know how he or she raised the produce. 

So are you gluten free or thinking about it?   Consider how you change your diet. Keep those gluten free treats as just that, more of a treat. Read the labels to see what is in the food you are buying. And EAT MORE VEGGIES.

 Shared at Wildcrafting Wednesday,  Wellness Wednesday.