Month: December 2012

I am Catholic. Being Catholic and a celiac presents challenges because communion hosts are required to contain wheat. I used to try to just receive the cup but after spending too many Sunday afternoons ill on the couch, I realized that even the gluten from the host dropped into the cup was causing problems. Very low gluten hosts which are acceptable to the church are available from the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration (they use wheat starch that tests at the very low level of gluten of most foods marked gluten-free). but there are still issues of how the hosts are to be delivered to the congregant without cross contamination. If you are Catholic, gluten-free and want to be able to receive communion you will need to get the cooperation of your pastor. That said, there is a way that you can manage to receive communion even if you need a gluten free host. Each parishoner who needs a gluten-free host can purchase what is known as a pyx. A pyx is the proper name for those ministry of care cases that hold the host so that it can be brought to a person who is too ill to attend mass. You can get one for as little as $20. If there are multiple parishoners who have issues at the same mass, then you will want to coordinate your...

We traveled today to spend Christmas with family in Florida. I suddenly realized I have not written about how to manage air travel when you are gluten-free…or really when you have any serious food allergy or sensitivity. Air travel is much easier than road trips if only because you dpn’t need to pack as much food. That said, you now have to personally carry the food through to your final destination without benefit of a cooler or ice packs. Over the years I have developed a system to make our trips safer and easier. These are my tips and tricks. They are not the only ones and you may have others that you want to share. This is just what I wish someone had told me three years ago. Stuff your face before you leave home – The one time that I cannot imagine eating another thing is right before the taxi comes to take me to the airport. I eat until I am full and then a bit more. This way, hopefully, I won’t need to haul quite as much food through the airport. Dedicate a tote bag – You want to be able to just clear TSA without bruising or crushing your bananas, apples etc. and this is much easier if they make the trip in their own bag. Pack all your meals through to your destination…and...

I have spent the last week flopped on the couch with the flu. This means I have been watching too many cooking shows and one came on that I thought was just so important to the current national debate around mental illness that I had to weigh in. Because one of the many things that struck me sickeningly about last week’s horror story was the fact that Adam Lanza was a vegan. Veganism is a legitimate diet choice for anyone willing to put in the effort to do it correctly. As the entire cast of Forks over Knives demonstrates, when done correctly vegan eating can be a real boon to the health of many people. When done incorrectly by the “muffin vegans” there can be serious health issues. The show that made me think was a rerun of my old favorite Good Eats. Alton Brown was making tortillas from corn. He pointed out that the proper way to make corn into edible masa flour is to soak it for about 12 hours in an alkaline solution. It takes quite a bit of pickling lime, (the Aztecs just used wood ash) to make corn edible. No it isn’t poisonous if you eat it without the process, but it can cause something called pellagra. Pellagra causes skin conditions, ataxia, mental confusion, sleep disorders, aggression, diarrhea, and eventually dementia. What is pellagra?...

If you are allergic to dairy or shellfish one tool that you can use to help you eat safely is to look for the Kosher label. My college roommate was a conservative Jew who taught me how to look for the Orthodox Union or OU certification on foods (it is a U in a circle) because that way we could have say one container of coffee or chocolate syrup. Later I learned about other competing koshering agencies (Star-K, CRC, and Circle K are other big ones) and how to find the logo on food labels and what they meant. As a Catholic I largely ignored kosher certification, until I started having food issue and realizing that I needed to pay attention. Kosher, and kosher for passover food, is a real blessing for those with certain allergies. Kosher does not mean that a food is somehow blessed. It means that it has passed an inspection by a mashgiach (an observant Jew who is an expert in koshering rules) to ensure that the food meets certain standards. So the koshering agency checks, for real, to make sure that the product is made on clean and appropriate equipment. So if something says Kosher Parve that means that all the processes and procedures were checked to ensure that there is no dairy in the product, if there is a trace amount of dairy...