Month: November 2013

Gluten Free Living Dec 12 through 15

This is going to be a short post, but I wanted to let you all know that Dr. Tom O’Bryan, the man who coordinated The Gluten Summit is planning a follow up that is all about what to do with the information that we now have as a result of the summit. I am looking forward to this because one of the challenges that I have had over the past few years has been in actually implementing what I knew. We have been gluten-free dairy-free and corn-free for a few years now and I would love to get blood work done to see if there is anything else I need to avoid. I would love to know what other autoimmune symptoms to beware. I already get a super-comprehensive thyroid panel but what else should I look for? And what do you say to people with other autoimmune conditions who really need to be checked? What tests should they demand? Fortunately it appears that endocrinologists are catching up to the link between celiac disease and type 1 diabetes. But what about NCGS and schizophrenia or autism? As I know more I will post more. He just did a save the date for now, so be on the...

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Gluten-Free Homemade Turkey Stock

Every year I order a wild / heritage turkey. They taste far better than anything you could get in a store, and they lived longer, happier, more environmentally sensitive, turkey lives. That said they are also a lot more expensive and so I like to use every last bit of turkey. And so each year I make stock from what remains after the turkey is carved. Here is the process I use. As the turkey is carved I have my largest stock pot standing by. We put the carcass, skin, wing tips and other bones into the stock pot. I also put in any pan drippings and then cover with water, Then I put it on a back burner, raise the heat to a boil and then loosely cover the pot reduce the heat to keep it gently boiling while we eat, have dessert, and clean up. It requires no real maintenance but it needs to boil for about four hours. The carcass will fall apart. When it does you can allow the liquid to begin boiling away because the amount of liquid needed to cover the carcass will be much less once the connective tissue holding it together falls apart. After two hours you can decide how you want to handle the remains. You can strain the stock and toss the remains or, if you are as thrifty...

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Which Organic Companies Are Trying to Stop GMO Labeling

England did not end slavery by making the slave trade illegal. The English ban on slavery was led by a commoner, William Wilberforce, whose family made their money in business. He knew that to change things you don’t need to make it illegal, you simply have to make it unprofitable. Currently, the only way to avoid eating GMOs is to eat organic or GMO Free certified food. This is literally putting your money where your mouth is. The problem is that many of the healthy brands you have come to trust are now owned by the big food companies which are using profits from their organic divisions to fight GMO labeling. And they are afraid that their customers will find out and spend their money elsewhere. So when I-522 went on the ballot in Washington State, many ran their donations through the Grocery Manufacturers Association instead of transparently donating the money. Some of the companies who donated this way are what I would call “the usual suspects” and they are known to object to labeling, but others surprised me (Bumble Bee was a stunner). Here is a link to the list http://www.storyleak.com/wash-state-lawsuit-reveals-corporations-laundered-money-fight-gmo-labeling/ Now the list just tells you who the corporations are. It doesn’t tell you what brands they own or have. For example, Naked Juice is a Pepsi product. Odwalla, Simply Orange, and Honest Tea are owned by...

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A Gluten-Free Dairy-Free Nut-Free Soy-Free Vegan Friendly Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a time for families to get together and eat a meal. Between food allergies and special diets, this has become increasingly difficult. Last year I did a series of posts on the topic of special diets and the holidays and this is the wrap up for Thanksgiving. The recipes that I link to here will allow you to feed a vegan guest everything but turkey. There is a vegan dressing option, a vegan mashed potatoes, vegan sweet potatoes, vegan cranberry sauce (which should always be vegan, but may not be), vegan pumpkin cheesecake and vegan apple tart. All of these items are gluten-free dairy-free egg-free soy-free tree-nut free peanut-free corn-free and of course free of fish and shellfish. Unless your bread contains seeds like flax or sesame this dinner is also seed free and by obtaining a citrus-free cranberry sauce the meal is citrus-free. I am quite sure your vegan guests will be stuffed. And you will only be making one small accomodation on the stuffing. You can offer vegan gravy or tofurky (carefully segregated as this stuff is full of gluten) as well. What I would suggest is that you have your vegan guests bring their own vegan nut free gravy. Or you can use mine here The entire meal is gluten-free dairy-free corn-free and nut-free (coconut is used in several recipes but substitutes are available)....

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Why Carrageenan Should Be Avoided by Everyone

In general we have avoided processed gluten, dairy and corn free foods that contain additives. That said like most people we have ended up consuming a few things that contain zinc oxide or titanium dioxide (non toxic white paint), a lot of natural flavors (which is its own blog post) and then the controversial carrageenan. I wasn’t too worried about carrageenan…until now. See as it turns out, just like when they want obese rats they feed the rats MSG and bingo, morbidly obese rats. So I no longer eat MSG because if I am going to get morbidly obese, I plan to use chocolate. Well just like MSG is the standard for making rats fat, when they need to test an anti-inflammatory agent, they induce inflammation in the rats with carrageenan. No seriously, the following study is not all that relevant, but read the part where when they wanted the rat paw to swell up they just used carrageenan. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24190755 Here they inflamed his little prostate http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24256126 As a matter of fact when you put carrageenan into the PubMed database as a search term, you get a bunch of hits for drugs that reduce inflammation which were all tested and shown to reduce inflammation in mice and rats which were treated with or fed carrageenan. Now what follows is a full paper but just read the introduction. When they...

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Gluten-Free Corn-Free Soy-Free Vegan Chocolate Chip Blondies

Want a super easy chocolate chip blondie recipe that is gluten-free, dairy-free, corn-free, soy-free, egg-free, nut-free and legume free? It could also be potato-free but I used Ener-G egg replacer which is not potato-free. This is my son’s favorite dessert. Interestingly these actually taste better without the eggs than they do with the eggs. Go figure. I like to make them at night and then cut and refrigerate them in the morning. They can be frozen as well. These are my son’s favorite dessert. They taste like an extra gooey soft chocolate chip cookie. Yes for the most part I am recommending brands. The reason for that is because this is what I have tested and know works. I think any solid oil works. That said, I have only tested a few. Namaste makes the only blondie mix that is free of so many allergens, and Enjoy Life is serious about chocolate chips that really do not contain dairy. So the brands actually do matter. Without further ado, here is the recipe Ingredients 1 package Namaste Blondie Mix 1 12 oz bag Enjoy Life mini-chocolate chips (the bigger ones sink) 1 cup water 2 tablespoons EnerG egg replacer powder 3/4 cup Spectrum butter flavor shortening, coconut oil or coconut spread, melted in microwave Additional oil for greasing pan Equipment Measuring cups and spoons Large mixing bowl 13 x 9...

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Major Depression and Gluten Sensitivity

The Gluten Summit is an online event going on this week where experts (real experts with real degrees and real teaching positions) are discussing the latest research into gluten and how it affects people. What is scary is that they seem to be finding that non-celiac gluten sensitivity may be more dangerous that full out celiac disease. One of the areas that was commented on by the nutritionist, Dr. Liz Lipski, today is major depression. More and more they are finding links between brain disorders and gluten sensitivity that is not celiac disease. They think that about 25% of people with autism have non-celiac gluten sensitivity, which I found fascinating because it would explain why there are so many parents who swear that their child recovered on the diet, and while many other parents who saw little or no change. I knew that there were similar statistics for schizophrenics. What I did not realize is that they now think that major depression is also potentially curable via a gluten-free diet. Now it should be noted that in all cases they are talking about a subset of the population with a disorder not everyone with that disorder. It is usually a significant subset, but it is not 100%. That said in all cases the compliance needs to be 100% all the time. One crouton sets a person back months. OK...

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The Latest in Gluten-Free Living – The Gluten Summit

Starting on Monday November 11 there is going to be an online event called The Gluten Summit. Each day four actual experts in celiac disease, autism, non-celiac gluten sensitivity and or gluten-free eating will be lecturing for free. If you have never done a telesummit before the way that they work is that you provide an email address, they give you access to the lectures. Each set of three or four lectures is available for 24 hours. If you want to hear a lecture after that you pay to upgrade to unlimited access of all lectures. I have gotten a lot out of just treating it like a live conference and choosing one lecturer that I really want to hear and then if I get to a second one, great. Other people like to purchase access to the lectures to listen over and over. It just depends on your income and your time. Some telesummits have goofy speakers that are not worth your time. This one is virtually all MDs including Alessio Fasano who is basically THE expert on non-celiac gluten sensitivity. There are also nutritionists and other medical professionals. The entire speaker roster with only a few exceptions is people who are actually licensed to give out medical advice. For those of you who do not want to give out an email address without knowing what you are...

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A Link Between Sensory Processing Disorder and Dyslexia

If your child has been diagnosed with sensory issues, you may want to get out the phonics books early. It appears that as many as two thirds of dyslexics have sensory issues. The issues themselves seem to be all over the map. Some are visual, some are auditory. Some appear to be around balance and motor issues. It may well be that there is correlation without causality. It is just something to be aware of. Dyslexia, caught early, has the potential to become a non-issue. Intensive special education, extra support and specific teaching of phonological rules can largely neutralize the impact. Caught late, or without appropriate support The actual study mentioned in the following article has a host of issues. First of all with only 16 dyslexics and 16 controls it barely qualifies as having any statistical relevance at all. Second, the population that they chose, university students, are not representative of the vast number of dyslexics who frequently decide to use their talents in a less frustrating manner or who get missed by special education entirely and end up in prison or dropping out of school. So I don’t think that the conclusions of their mini-study are especially useful. What is good about this article is that is summarizes in relatively non-technical terms the meta-results of many many other studies which use a more typical population and what...

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The Root Cause of Autoimmune Disease

Has anyone ever had the sick sinking feeling that the rash of MS, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Type 1 diabetes, allergies, Crohn’s and other autoimmune diseases might all have the same cause? Guess what…you were probably right. The human body apparently needs three things to get an autoimmune disease. The first is a genetic predisposition. The second is exposure to a trigger. If you never eat a peanut you can never be allergic to one. The third and most important is failure of the intestinal barrier. And the barrier may fail due to many causes, but so far there are two things that we know can cause it to fail. One of those things is bacterial or fungal overgrowth. The other is called zonulin. Zonulin is the name for the protein that your body manufactures that allows stuff that your body wants (like nutrients) out of the intestines while holding the pieces that your bloodstream has no interest in (like undigested food proteins, bacteria and fungi) inside your intestines. The role of zonulin appears to be to let the good stuff out of the intestine, however, too much zonulin and the intestines go haywire causing a condition known as “leaky gut” Large proteins get into the bloodstream where the immune system does its job and labels them as invaders and then attacks. Misregulation of zonulin appears to be at the root...

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