Month: November 2012

If you have read any of my other posts about Starbucks you know that we have one of those dysfunctional relationships where I know everything can work if they just change except that quite honestly they have no intention of changing and what I am asking for is completely unreasonable anyway. So to paraphrase their own website, if you have food allergies you need to be careful at Starbucks. The lattes and other combination drinks at Starbucks are likely to be cross-contaminated. They are very clear about that. Starbucks is a place that sells mostly gluten and dairy containing products and while the place is admirably clean, most Starbucks are not going to reach perfect celiac level gluten-free status. I drink the coffee, black, no sugar. I have never had an issue with that. Oh, but how I missed my lattes. Which is why Via is such good news. Technically, a Starbucks Peppermint Mocha does not contain gluten and can be made without dairy. Realistically, the product is made inside of an actual Starbucks and that steamer just steamed some dairy milk one minute ago. So if you want a really vegan experience…get the Via. Now the Peppermint Mocha meets all of my happy “real food” criteria. It only has 4 ingredients. It contains coffee beans, cane sugar, cocoa powder and yes the dreaded mystery “natural flavors”. Natural flavors...

The Wall Street Journal did an article this week on probiotics and how they may be very important to human health. You can see it here http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324784404578143402702878118.html. This is not news to us. Every day my son and I take a morning probiotic. We vary the strains between a few brands. I take mine as capsules and he gets his mixed into his chocolate coconut milk yogurt. We do this for a variety of reasons all of which are related to intestinal health. There are literally thousands of studies on the health benefits of probiotics on PubMed. Some of the newest ones include the following A review of probiotics in human health including diabetes. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23181893 The full article is available as a not fully formatted PDF, so this is in beta, but the information is still good. Just skip past the doctor bios. http://www.gutpathogens.com/content/pdf/1757-4749-4-15.pdf Probiotics seem to reduce the risk of death from some of our scarier pathogens (E Coli 57, Staph) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22955353 They seem to reduce heart disease http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23182355 Oh yes and autism. There seems to be some evidence it helps with the tantrums and sleep issues. Go to section three on microbiota abnormalities. Try not to scream. Has anyone thought about how irritable any person would become if they had a stomachache that lasted for years. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3205659/ But if none of that has you interested, perhaps this...

People often marvel at how well my son does with his diet. He does not cheat, instead politely informing people that he cannot eat gluten. He walks away from unapproved treats. I like to think that I help by typically finding him a version of whatever he wants that he can actually have. I like to think that he is the greatest kid ever and that he is just very capable and disciplined. The truth, however, may be even more simple than that. It is possible that he sticks to the diet for the same reason that I do. Nothing tastes as good as health feels. The following study was done on 67 people aged 7 to 42 with ADHD. About 15% (10 people) had previously undiagnosed celiac disease. These ten people were tested for severity of ADHD symptoms and then put on the GF diet with no supplements or other interventions besides iron supplements for six months. After six months gluten free they all reported feeling much clearer headed and their scores on the tests improved. Interestingly every one of them wanted to stay on the diet. Being able to control their impulses and to focus felt so good that there was no food that could compete. People often remark that it is a lot to give up and tell me they could not live the way I...

If gluten is all you are concerned about, you can drink most brands of egg nog. There is a fool somewhere who got gluten into the egg nog but in general it is not a huge problem. However if you are like me and cannot have dairy, or if you have a child who cannot have eggs, then join me in an exploration of the best of the vegan egg-nogs. When I was a child Christmas meant egg nog. We had egg nog cake with egg nog ice cream and of course, actual egg nog in front of the tree. I am not sure how my mother survived all that egg nog, without having a heart attack but somehow she did and we lived to tell the tale. I was sad not to be able to share this tradition, however strange, with my child, but having consumed a Starbucks egg nog latte made with soymilk last year and then been ill for two days, I knew that my days of dairy egg nog were indeed over. I tried some of the imitation egg nogs last year. I found that they varied from “undrinkable” all the way up to “not worth the calories”. Fortunately, things can change a lot in a year. So here is my rundown on the vegan nogs available in my local Whole Foods. These reviews reflect...