About Gluten Free Diet

Gluten is a naturally occurring protein in some cereals.

What is Gluten Free Diet

As you might guess gluten free diet means not including anything derived from gluten containing cereals. What you should exclude from your menu are wheat, rye and barley, malts and triticale.

As well as not using any foods flavored, stabilized or thickened by gluten, which means read carefully the ice-cream and ketchup labels where gluten is often used as such stabilizing and thickening agent. Also pay attention to vitamins and medication ingredients because gluten is very commonly used there as well.

Unfortunately gluten free diet is a way of living for people with wheat allergy or one of the following conditions: coeliac disease and dermatitis herpetiformis.

Gluten Free Foods

Here is the list of all grain and starch sources you can use in such a gluten-free diet.

Most commonly used are:

• corn
• potatoes
• rice
• tapioca (derived from cassava)

Other grains and starch sources suitable for this diet are:

• buckwheat
• millet
• sorghum
• sweet potato
• amaranth
• arrowroot
• montina
• lupin
• quinoa, (jowar)
• taro
• teff
• chia seed
• yam

Those are the foods – now lets find out why being on a gluten free diet is good and what are its medical benefits.

First of all if you don’t have any of the conditions I mentioned above you don’t need to be on a gluten free diet.

Although a substantial research is still not available, there is a link between gluten and autism in some scientific studies. That is why gluten free diet combined with casein free diet is used in autism therapies. It is more believed (from testimonials) than proven that autism-related symptoms such as verbal and social engagement skills actually benefit from casein free and gluten free diets.

However being on such a diet is not easy, because many deficiencies occur:

• failure to eat foods rich in needed nutrients
• eating too much fiber with meals, that binds nutrients
• slow or incomplete healing of the small intestine
• Helicobacter Pylori infection
• small bowel bacterial overgrowth
• giardia, etc.

A standard gluten-free diet dangerously reduces the recommended daily intake of fiber, folate, iron, calcium, etc. So people need to change their standard diet in order to include gluten-free oats, high fiber brown rice bread, and quinoa in their daily menu. This way the values of certain nutrients, vitamins and microelements will be significantly improved.