Its fine to bring my children up gluten free

[Ironfistfunkymum]

I've been gf for 6+ years, not alergic or anything but feel so much better for it. People seem generally fine with this.

However now I have children people do seem to judge bringing them up gf. But why would if feed them something that I dont think is very healthy (grains hard to digest) and something that I don't think is very ethical (wheat production is causing more deserts due to its growing conditions).

Aibu to expect people to respect my choice and leave it at that?

Anyone who says going gluten free is easy is not gluten free.

Not even every person with CD had to be that careful. My mums best friend had CD plus a range of other problems (about to hopefully have an organ transplant) and she can apparently cope with trace amounts very occasionally.

" she can apparently cope with trace amounts very occasionally."

Oh that's all right then. My mistake. Going gluten free is easy peasy.

Again - what?

Primal it is useless having a conversation with someone that part reads and quotes out of context just to have a go at someone.

What do your friends with children think of this OP? Are they all like you?

Primal it is useless having a conversation with someone...

Oh, are you having a conversation? Only I would have thought that might involve engaging with comments from posters who are challenging your OP, rather than just sending pretty pictures to the ones who think you're fabby...

(although I'd ignore the ones about 'child abuse', too, tbf)

PrimalLass- are you saying that it is easy and non restricting to be gluten free? I apologise if you're not- but it certainly seems as if that's what you are saying.

AnUtterIdiot - I have no issue with your food choices - but "gluten" and "wheat" are not the same thing; why do you ask about the former when you mean the latter? And the law has changed, by the way, so restaurants and catering facilities are now legally obliged to be transparent about what's in the food and how it's prepared so people can make an informed choice.

I'd love to know how it's easy to do, especially outside your home.

I have to buy expensive flours, gravy granules, stock, vinegars, soy sauce, pasta and bread. To me these are all staples of a healthy varied diet. I don't have the time/ability to make loads of my own stock etc and can't often afford the nice gf bread which is either uber expensive, uber time consuming to make or both. I don't always buy specifically gf versions of these things but often have to buy more expensive versions which can be incredibly difficult on a limited budget.

I cannot eat in a lot of restaurants/take aways on the odd occasion we go out and those I can eat in usually offer 2-3 options then you play russian roulette to see if you have d&v later. I cannot eat from a buffet at all. I cannot "grab some food" when out. I often take my own bread/pasta/entire meals to others houses. I have to explain to everyone I go see what I can and can't eat and why.

Breakfast and lunch I find a total pain and mostly live on naff tasting cereal (there's not just gluten in shredded wheat type cereals but also in corn flakes/rice krispies and similar even bog standard porridge is out) fruit, yoghurt (some, not all by a long shot) and salad (no crutons, no bacon bits) with cut meats/cheese (again have to check both meat and cheese for spices/bulking agents). Evening meals are easier as I can make my own staples like chilli, goulash, stroganoff, roast dinners, bolognaise, cottage pie etc. However even then I have to swap out pasta and yorkshires and check the gravy/spices.

None of this even covers treats like cake, biscuits, chocolate, crisps etc which are a law unto themselves.

I am still completely confused as to why anyone would choose this with no medical reason. For the record I am not a fan of making a child follow a strict vegan/veggie diet either. I feed my kids a balanced, healthy diet which includes some gf days and some veggie days but any choices like being vegan/veggie fulltime I will leave them to make as they wish and support them if they choose that diet.

OP's justification for being GF is protecting her DC from (as far as I can see from the posts) a potential (but not proven) source of harm

^ in which case I assume she never lets them go in a car, or cross the road?!

as for the coeliacs who are fine with an occassional slip/mishap/deliberate cheat - some choose stupidly not to stick to GF diet, against medical advise, because they can't be faffed, or have no will power, because they don't WANT to be embarrassed by making a fuss very time they eat out, because they don't WANT their friends to stop inviting them on nights out etc. They also make it harder for those actuallly sticking properly to the GF diet! and even if they don't immediately get awful symptoms, the chances are they STILL damage their gut, which heals and scars every time, leading to possible bowel cancer, and also while damaged/healing, they are not absorbing all their nutrients correctly. They are the reason the rest of us have to be even more careful - I saw a chippy advetising GF last week - on questioning them, they cook all the fish, Gf and non GF batter, in the same oil, so it was not GF at all, nor should they be saying it is! But their 'regular GF customer' never gets ill so it must be safe, is what they told me! Er, no thanks, we will continue to do a 30 mile round trip for the nearest proper safe GF fish and chips.

Knorr stock cubes are GF, as are Kallo.

Primal
From what i can gather from mu DN. With CD you cant cope with a trace occassionally. Even if you dont have reaction traces still do damage,which is why they cant have any cross contamination.

On, and Nairns GF muesli is nice, not naff, and not ridiculously expensive.

Asda GF fruit and oat cookies are the best biscuits ever (fact), and Tesco GF chocolate cake is lovely.

Well with everything else going on she'll probably be stricter with the CD once she's through her op.

I really hate this thing that if you're not a coeliac you're a fantasist or an attention seeker for not eating gluten. "
I'm certainly not saying that. I think it's wrong to restrict children's diets for no good reason. But my real problem is with people saying they are "gluten free" when they are patently not. Because nobody who is could possibly say it is easy and non restricting.

don't get me started on the prevalence of oats in GF biscuits etc! They are not advised for children who have been recently diagnosed with CD and even some adults are advised to be wary of/limit their intake - many coeliacs cant take any oats at all, becuase of the protein in them that is very similar to gluten.

so when DD goes to a friends, not only do I have to go through the whole coeliac thing, but she also has to be wary in case they have thoughtfully brought a packet of freefrom biscuits that she still cant eat.

It's certainly easier - and cheaper - to avoid gluten than it was six years ago, when our son was diagnosed. The growth in the market has been exponential (ironically, largely thanks to people like the OP).

"Bringing up a child gluten free", however, remains complex and challenging, for a whole range of reasons - including emotional and social ones.

I've never had many problems eating out and about, but then again I live in an affluent area. I recently went on holiday to Copenhagen and they were very forward thinking with regards to a healthy diet.

I don't see ice cream, bread or pasta as essential to life. No such thing as essential carbohydrates. Anyway they did have ice cream the other day at a festival, you know what they just had it in a tub.

We found Copenhagen extremely difficult for gluten free eating; no one there seemed to have any concept of it. But there again, we're not terribly affluent, so I expect we were frequenting a different class of eatery from the OP (i.e. supermarkets).

Spain, as a pp mentioned, is great. It helps that the owner of one of the largest supermarket chains has a daughter with CD.

Primallass and IronFist.

Are you gluten free?

So because you live in an affluent area the local restaurants don't use vinegar or soy sauce in their salad dressings? Or flour to thicken sauces? Or was that just another stealth boast? I hardly live in a slum but dh still finds it difficult to eat out. As pp have said, not everyone understands the implications of being gluten free and some restaurant staff will think 'well that customer last week was gf and had that so it must be ok' without realising that the casserole has beer in it or the sauce contains barley.

" I recently went on holiday to Copenhagen and they were very forward thinking with regards to a healthy diet."

You keep equating "gluten" with "unhealthy" (and claiming a gluten-free diet is somehow inherently healthier) and making vague hand-wavey Paleo website claims that it's "actually, like, reeeeally bad for everyone" when as far as I can tell there's no evidence of the sort. Avoid gluten if you have CD, by all means, avoid gluten if you react badly to gluten, but avoiding gluten just because you think it's an "unhealthy food" and not part of "clean eating" (or, as far as I can tell, "naice middle-class ever-so-ethnic artisan eating without all that yucky prolefood") or "I vaguely feel it might give me the sniffles and the people at Crossfit told me it was evil" is bonkers. Cutting it out of your children's diets doubly so. And, as PP, you don't appear to know what GF means, or the difference between it and a wheat allergy. Also as per my coeliac friend who gets vicious RA flareups if he eats gluten, living in an affluent area doesn't make it all that much easier if you literally can't handle traces of it.

Though what would I know, I am also a naice middle-class person who cooks from scratch and has been to Copenhagen and yet have not seen the light about how I am poisoning my children with sourdough.