Month: May 2013

This is a documentary that everyone should see. It answered a question that has always bothered me. Why on earth am I not fatter and why are people who seem to eat far less than I do not thinner? In fairness, I do eat plenty of veggies and fruit and very healthy food. But I also eat a fair amount of food that is supposed to be terribly fattening. I have been known to eat an entire avocado as a snack. I have eaten a pound of spinach artichoke dip in a single sitting. I sometimes eat hummus with a spoon. I don’t have a “fast metabolism”. Like half of celiacs I have the metabolism of a reptile. I am always cold. My thyroid is on low alert. The weather is never too hot for me. On top of all of that I write a baking blog. Every recipe that makes it onto this site is one that I have eaten at least three times. Right now in my house is the remains of a chocolate tiramisu (still too runny), a banana bread pudding, and a swiss roll cake (frosting needs work). So what is the difference? Why doesn’t my butt need to apply for statehood? The BBC 2 documentary The Men Who Made Us Fat has a lot of the answers. It is rare that I start anything...

One of the largest challenges of being an allergy mom is the fact that processed food is off limits. It does not matter if you are laid up with the flu or stuck in an impossible work deadline, you are not going to be able to safely order a gluten-free dairy-free corn-free pizza for delivery. If you cannot heat it you cannot eat it. So while I know of precisely one place that I can obtain a pizza assuming I can pick it up, getting that heat and eat meal for the day when I am desperate used to require a lot of planning. This is why I was thrilled to learn of Amy’s gluten, dairy and corn free pizza. Until recently the frozen pizza aisle had become an area that I simply did not visit. There was no point. However recently it has started to get a little more friendly. There are now gluten-free pizzas, soy free pizzas, dairy-free pizzas and even a gluten-free, corn-free and dairy-free pizza. If your issues are with dairy and soy, Daiya has a pizza out now. If, like us, you can tolerate soy but not gluten or dairy, then go with Amy’s and pick the spinach one…it tastes better. These brands were all available at my local Whole Foods. Now if you live here in Chicagoland you can always try a dairy...

One thing that makes me crazy is people who invent their own facts. I find this especially trying when the facts that they make up seem to defy basic laws of physics, biology or chemistry and when there is no actual science of any kind to back up this theory. I learned about one of those rules this week. The American Heart Association is recommending that American women not eat more than 100 calories of added sugar per day. Added sugar is defined as sugar put into food, not naturally occurring sugars. This made my brain hurt for several reasons including the following – Last time I checked the fructose molecule did not have isotopes that were different in juice than they are in soda. – The reason that they give diabetics a glass of orange juice when they OD on insulin is because of all the sugar in it. – If a bottle of juice contains 39 grams of sugars (or about 8 teaspoons or 120 calories from sugar) how exactly is that OK to consume in unlimited quantities simply because it occurs naturally? – 100 calories is a round number and seems really fake. Is there some reason for this number as opposed to say 120 calories or did somebody just make it up? I agree with the general premise. We eat and drink too much sugar....

My mother always joked about how much she ate. She never met a danish or bacon she did not like and she was always always fashion model thin. Then suddenly boom. She needed to count every calorie often eating amounts of food that to my nine year old eyes appeared insufficient for anything larger than a ferret. She stayed a healthy weight but only by being constantly hungry. This may explain part of what happened. This one hour documentary from the BBC has nothing to do with food allergies or celiac disease but it gets at the larger issue of food and medical problems and how none of this is ever “all in your head”. This documentary shows evidence that obesity and thinness are not about willpower or discipline, but may actually be about epigenetics and viruses. This documentary covers a one month study where scientists did an experiment in England on a group of volunteers who described themselves as the sort of people who could eat anything they wanted without gaining weight to see what would happen if they made them eat twice as many calories as they needed each day for a month. The results were very interesting All the “naturally thin” people found it difficult to eat all that high calorie food. It nauseated them. Some people gained fat and weight as one might expect. Yet...

For those of you who struggle with life threatening food allergies, this PBS documentary is a must see. We don’t currently have any life threatening allergies. I used to have some and the running joke was that I never ever went anywhere without my purse. I carried it to every college party, even if they were just down the hall. I took it dancing, I carried it everywhere. People joked that it was my “blankey”. Actually, it contained my EpiPen. My allergies were respiratory and have faded over time and with the diet so I haven’t needed an EpiPen for years. That said, I still remember the terror of struggling for air. So even though our current issues are the sort that don’t kill anyone right away, I know what it is like to feel that fear and also what it is like when people act like you must somehow be exaggerating and they decide that somehow “just a little” won’t be a problem. Which is why I loved the name of this documentary. I am not sure that the first link which will allow you to see the movie for free is legal, but I am providing it until such time as PBS takes it down since I think everyone needs to see this movie. I have heard horror stories of school districts trying to compel the children...

I love Dr. Daniel Amen and Dr. Mark Hyman. I believe the world is a better place because of the work that they have done. That said, there is one area where they have done their fans a disservice. I have never seen them be straight with people about the relationship stress caused by a dramatic permanent change in diet. Once the change is made it is straightforward, but that first year of creating and enforcing boundaries, of learning about yourself, is pretty tough. And glossing over how hard it is does no one any favors. So here are some of the things you may go through when you try to change what you eat. 1) Changing your diet often causes your friends and family to question the way that they eat and feed their children. Not that you are eating better they are comparing what they do to what you do. Given how often I see a child’s hand in a bag of fries or cheesy fish crackers this tends to make them feel self-conscious. They may lash out at you for the fact that they know that they should change but don’t have the guts or the energy. Its not fun, but it is also not personal. They don’t like what they see in the mirror. You just happen to be able to save yourself…and be in...

This year for my birthday I had one and only one destination in mind. Senza. Senza is not a large place. It is modern fine dining. In other words people wear all sorts of clothes but the waitstaff is dressed and the meal for the evening is a prix fixe tasting menu. Years agp, when I had no idea what was wrong with me, each year on my birthday I would sample yet another Chicago restaurant that had a prix fixe menu where I was turning myself over to the chef and preparing to be amazed. I remember after one such dinner at a restaurant that has since closed my friend and I remarked that we now needed to go home and experience sensory deprivation as the meal had been so fabulous and so fantastically demanding on our senses. However in the years since I have been gluten-free my birthday dinner has become more of a fish and steakhouse experience since fine dining that could accomodate gluten-free dairy-free and corn-free was out of range. I thoroughly enjoyed the fish places, but it was not the same. Then about a year ago, I learned that Senza would be opening and that the entire restaurant would be gluten-free and the chef would work with other food issues, They had not opened in time for my birthday last year, but this year,...

One of the medical mysteries around celiac disease is the large number of celiacs who swear that they are being good and not eating any gluten but who still feel lousy. Many continue to have gut damage and are told that they are either lying, incompetent at being gluten-free, or if their doctor does not treat them like a preschooler with a behavior problem, they are told that they are in a category that is somehow not fully responsive to a gluten free diet. The subject is then dropped. This is not an insignificant problem. One study out of Columbia University where over 7,000 celiacs were biopsied 5 years post diagnosis showed that a full 43% of them were “refactory” which means that their villi did not heal. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23190299 There is increasing evidence that the reason that these people do not heal may have to do with the fact that their bodies react to corn and or dairy in the same way that they react to wheat gluten. Note that in each of the following published studies about 1/3 to 1/2 of the celiacs tested suffered measurable intestinal mucosal damage from dairy and corn. So between 33% and 50% of celiacs react to corn and dairy. Hey and 43% still have damage. Can I demonstrate a connection, no. Do I think it warrants further investigation? Well, as one researcher...

Like half of celiacs in a small study that no one’s gastroenterologist seems aware of. we are intolerant of both dairy and corn. Like most intolerances however, once a food has been processed within an inch of its life (i.e. HFCS) it is no longer an issue since most if not all of the proteins in the food have been processed away. So as a results ingesting high-fructose corn syrup does not cause any notable symptoms. However, I do look for some indication that a product I am considering is corn-free. It is simply something on my checklist at the grocery store and the vitamin store, which is probably why I noticed that virtually all of the children’s gummy vitamins, even the “healthy” ones with no artificial anything, contain genetically modified corn syrup. Now of course, they don’t call it that. No it goes by the name “glucose syrup”. And yet it is GMO unless the product is labeled organic or GMO free. And most of them are not. So what is a mother to do? Well interestingly, they are now coming out with sugar-free gummy vitamins. Now a few words of caution. When it comes to the sugar free version, the word “gummy” is a bit of a stretch. These have a consistency closer to a Starburst of a Jujube. They are very chewy. In addition, without all...