ISO: ISO: the science of gluten-free. Is there any book or website that delves into this in detail -

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cheezz

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like Cook's Illustrated... looking for something to explain the reason and way some things work as this is a whole new area for me. Glutenfreegirl has provided a couple of good recipes, but am trying to venture out and be able to amend some already of my own tried & true recipes.

Thanks!!

 
I've been fascinated with this subject ever sice I took a course talking about how

your diet effects your mental health. The professor's daughter was diagnosed as a schizophrenic before they discovered that she actually had celiac disease. After eliminating gluten from her diet, she fully recovered from her ailment.

There is also a lot of research into gluten intolerance and Autism.

Our food choices are very powerful!

 
Power of food choices, indeed. Lisa, I too have been doing a ton of research on

food and how it affects the brain.

It's staggering...especially in early nutrition. I also read a VERY eye opening book called "Organic, Inc." The author takes you through the foundation of the organic movement, contrasts that with big ag, and profiles farmers and farming practices and the affects of non-organic foods. I underrated the importance of organic foods as a new wave marketing hype. But after learning that in California they use over 8 Million pounds of pesticides annually just for strawberry crops, and now legislation has forbid commerical strawberry production from being within proximity of schools, it was a serious eye opener.

 
Cheezz...going gluten free....

My friend Shauna is the author of the blog "Gluten-Free Girl" and while she doesn't go into depth about how the wheat flour alternatives work together (some she's still learning about), there's a nice collection of recipes on her blog (link below). She also has a collection of links that may be helpful.

Knowing Shauna has been a real eye opener to gluten intollerance. Gluten hides in places you'd never expect (nuts...to keep them from sticking together when shipping), etc.

I'm very serious about this...my best advice is when dining in public, tell the people immediately that they are gluten-intollerant. The chef knows his recipes and his ingredients and can help navigate the menu or make necessary substitutions. You can't have them on your side if they don't know they need to help. Even if you know how to cook and KNOW how things should be prepared, it's best to say it up front.

I did an interview with a girl this summer who was selling ice cream at the farmers markets. If you've known me for 2 minutes you know, I'm an ice cream freak and I KNOW how to make ice cream. Well, she starts telling me about her custard base and mentions she puts FLOUR in it. "Stop the press! Flour? Really???? Why? And most importantly, do you have a sign telling people that?" She didn't know why the base had flour, she was just following a recipe she found (there's one in Fannie Farmer's book, for example) and she didn't disclose it because she didn't see the need. It was an innocent oversight that probably made a lot of people sick. (Since then, she quit using flour at all.)

I know how to make ice cream and have made it hundreds of times. Until I met her, I never saw a recipe with flour in it. Since then I've done a ton of research about ice creams and the properties involved in using starches (flour, potato four, cornstarch, etc.)

But the bottom line is, I would have NEVER suspected flour in a simple thing like ice cream. And given the chef factor and creative license...it's just that easy to get contaminated. And trust me, a simple contamination like that would flatten my friend Shauna for 3 days.

My standard m.o., if you have an allergy, before eating anything in public, ask about it. I know it's a pain but I really love Shauna's attitude. She's helping educate people about the importance and risks.

http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/

 
Learned so much when we had my mom on a gluten-free diet for a year...

Learned SO much about how colon troubles affect the brain, as Lisa mentioned. Dr. Oz (on Oprah) says the colon is more closely related to the brain than any other organ ... if the colon's troubled, so is the brain and vice-versa. Took my mom to two local gluten-free Thanksgiving dinners (and the celiac group's monthly meetings); again, learned of so many folks saying their brain function returned once they got on a gluten-free diet.

We also learned how many foods that appear to have no wheat whatsover are not gluten-free. Candies, soy sauce, hot cocoa mix, canned baked beans, even some vitamins!

Took her to I-Hop one morning before church ... only to learn they put flour (actually, I think it was a touch of pancake mix) in their omelets. So, suddenly what had seemed like a great choice wasn't.

Had a waiter at PF Chang's promise me that the noodles he served us were rice noodles "because I told the chef to make this gluten-free." I had to kindly but persuasively ask him to take the noodles back to the chef and verify (because us foodies know the difference between rice noodles and flour noodles, right?). He came back just beside himself that there had been a mistake made. The manager came over and gave a brief apology, saying something like "I understand flour can make some people sick." I explained that "sick" was an understatement ... it wouldn't be just a minor problem for the next few trips to the bathroom, but it would be such a major ordeal for days and days that it would keep Mom house-bound.

In the end, the gluten-free diet didn't solve my mother's problems ... she improved a bit for a few months, but her real problem was radiation damage from cancer treatment 30 years earlier. Once the surgeon determined this, we did breathe a sigh of relief on Mom's behalf because she'd have more freedom in eating. And the first gluten she asked for was "pot stickers with real soy sauce!"

 
You can find gluten-free soy sauce,

if I recall it was called tamari and I used to get it at Henry's. I used it in my chutneys I sold, and was educated by some of my gluten-free customers. I had another customer who had corn allergies, and couldn't eat pizza and a lot of breads because of the cornmeal they used to bake them with. I would have never thought of that.

 
Mmm...that's a good one! I sampled them as she was playing with the recipe. smileys/smile.gif

 
Wow...that's amazing...I'm glad to hear your mom is better and I'm looking foward to researching

more about the link between the colon and the brain (outside of late night infomercials, that is...).

I had no idea about flour in omlettes, but it doesn't surprise me. Gluten is so pervasive. I get invited to potlucks at the Gluten-Free Girl's house all the time and it kills me. I'm scared to death thinking I might contaminate her somehow. I've resorted to bringing ice cream and at the last party someone commented about my habitual ice cream habit. I didn't say anything, but I've decided it stresses me out too much to get much more creative than that. I used to pour over cookbooks, read every single freaking lable, and still end up e-mailing her "Is this okay?" Life is so much easier since I started revving up the ice cream machine!

Hmm...wonder what my colon thinks about ice cream??? LOL!

 
yeah, but you know if you missed bringing ice cream 1 single time, there would be complaints smileys/smile.gif

 
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