Can anyone recommend an oat or barley based cereal for babies which is gluten free?

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Lots of gluten free cereals are loaded with sugar, often disguised as fruit juice, fructose, etc so watch out for that. Ready Brek is oat based and goes down well.

Gina Ford can, but try to find one suitable for young babies and it turns into an impossible mision!

Have you asked your GP. Seriously if you have a gluten intolerance you can get lots of things on prescription. I would not recomend the bread though, even the ducks spat it out!

Valentine, I am sure that Baby Organix do a gluten free breakfast cereal, and their products are available from most leading supermarkets.
Check their website for more details. Also most smaller health shops do a range of gluten free cereals.

Buckwheat is gluten-free. It is not wheat, despite its name, but a form of leek. Also millet and quinoa are gluten-free. Buckwheat has a nice taste IMO, but millet and quinoa both have a certain bitterness when ground, so you would have to sweeten them with, say, fruit puree.

The easiest way I found to use them was to buy the flours from a health-food shop and cook them up as porridge. I would usually mix some flour and water into a thin slurry (sorry, don't remember the proportions) in a small heat-proof bowl and place it on a trivet in a pan of boiling water. That way I didn't have to stand around stirring it and it didn't bubble or burn. It only needed an occasional stir.

The grains are easy enough to cook, and make a pleasant change from, say, rice or couscous for an older child or adult.

Forgot to mention that you can cook up a large quantity and freeze as ice-cubes.

thanks for all of the responses!

Valentine, i wouldnt reccomend kellogs rice krispies as they do hold gluten. Its quite far down the food chain hidden in the maize i think. Anyway my coeliac son reacted to it even though the quantaties were minute. My ds is now 10 months and he has the puffed rice cereal fron the free from range in Sainsburys, its made by Kallo.

Some gluten allergys can have the rice Krispies but coeliacs shouldnt.

Most malt contains gluten, which wipes out the big brands of cornflakes and rice crispies. I would telephone the manufacturers though as some do source gluten free malt.

I kept DS wheat free for his first year because of allergies, but I did give him ricies and cornflakes occassionally from about 9 months. Some coeliacs can't eat oats, but again I gave them from 9 months because it was wheat I wanted to avoid - not gluten.

Depends why you are doing it really. Oh, I also found my son was perfectly happy to eat baby rice and fruit puree for months and months, up to about a year I think.