Gluten free people - I need advice!

[FoofyShmooffer]

The GP has this morning informed me that he thinks it's likely I'm wheat intolerant and should try a gluten free diet for 6 weeks to see.
I had to go to Sainsburys straight after and found 1/3 of an aisle dedicated to gluten free produce and it's all so expensive. After traipsing around for half an hour I got so disheartened by the fact that this could be complicated. I thought well if I eat my own cereal in the morning and substitute the bread and pasta I'll be fine.

Doesn't seem that simple though.
So I wondered how you all do it? Is there a way for this to be simple and inexpensive? Any tips you could pass on please?

Bump?

Last ditch bump [pleading face]

Sorry, I'm new to it too, but happy to bump for you!

Nope. It's very expensive

You are best off staying away from processed stuff.

Do you have the list of things that your should be looking out for in the ingredients list?

Gluten is in everything! including some colas, ketchups, soy sauce...

It is expensive but I have substituted biscuits for fruit and veg or tayto, Bread I bought a bag of gluten free flour mix [my lidl] and make a half pound loaf everyone else gets ordinary bread, sandwiches are filling with rye cracker minus bread, I have made pots of soup with potato to thicken for lunch, and moussaka instead of lasagna.

meant to add - there's no trick to it though, you just have to read all the ingredients lists and avoid all the stuff with gluten in it.

When my children first went gf, I printed off a list and carried it in my purse
this might be useful

Has your GP actually done any tests on you? I had a blood test last year that came back positive and then had to have an endoscopy to confirm the results. I have coeliacs disease which means i can't eat gluten which is in wheat, barley and rye. If you get a proper diagnosis then you can get some basic foods like bread and pasta on prescription.You have to pay for the prescription but it works out cheaper if you pay for an annual one. If you are going to get these tests done it is very important that you eat a normal gluten containing diet before the test otherwise it won't come back with the correct results.

If you eat rice, potatoes, fresh meat, fruit and veg it is cheap and easy. As soon as you want to add wheat substitutes and processed food or sauces it gets tricky and sometimes expensive.

Give us a list of what you need to substitute and maybe we can help.
I have a cooked breakfast or a smoothie
Fruit as a mid morning snack or some dark chocolate
Lunch salad or soup or a sandwich with gluten free bread
Dinner anything really but if pizza I have a stock of gluten free bases which I put topping on for me and I make flour base for others.
Stews casseroles [given the weather I thicken with a tablespoon of gluten free flour or potato.
Today we are having Turkey fillet filled with herbs, sausage meat and bacon with cream potato and veg dessert is apple crumble with a toasted oat crumble, yesterday it was salmon with a garlic butter sauce, mushroom risotto and steamed veg. If that helps.

Thankyou, thankyou for answering.

Great

No I don't have a list. Where can I find the list?

God I'm slow at typing. All brilliant thanks.

He told me there is no test. It sounds like intolerance not allergy. Therefore the only way to find out is a 6 week break and if there is a significant difference.

I think I panicked in Sainsburys because I went in specifically to buy processed crap for DH and DS for the football tonight. Pizza and stuff.

So with a lot of thought I can do this.

I try to avoid gluten as I find being gluten free has improved my psoriasis considerably. I am not 100% strict which makes it easier, but the only thing that really costs more for me is gluten free cereal as I eat it almost daily. I don't eat much bread anyway, so although it's expensive I freeze it and it lasts me a while. Gluten free pasta is more expensive than normal, but not too bad. If you buy gluten free flour, you can pretty much bake as normal, and I find my home made cakes much nicer than the bought ones anyway. We eat a lot of naturally gluten free meals, such as chicken/fish with veg and brown rice, nice salads. Jacket potatoes make good lunches. This Christmas I hope to bake my own mince pies as I bought them last year and it got expensive (I ate quite a lot of them ).

I've been gluten (and dairy and yeast) free for about 10 years. The stuff in the supermarket is really expensive and on the whole isn't very healthy, as it's full of sugar and fat.

Saying that there are times when a "free-from" mist descends and I must buy it all and scoff it in the car on the way home.

Your best bet is to buy one of the good gluten-free cookbooks - I like the ones by Grace Cheetham and Antoinette Savill, but I'm sure there are other good ones out there.

It's very hard at the start as you feel that you're losing out, but it does get easier.

agree with hecate - gluten is everywhere, and substitutes are expensive (and not alwyas nice!)

if your gp is recommending this, is there any way he would get you gluten free foods on prescription? this can happen sometimes.

I have found the easiest way to manage gluten free (dd1 cannot have any wheat, oats, barley or rye at all, not even the tolerances usually okayed by the coeliac society) is to ignore the vast majority of the supermarket! my weekly shop consists of:

meat
fruit
veg

and er, thats about it! everything made from scratch, and then the odd thing thrown in occasionally as a treat for dd1 (dried fruits, mostly; occasionally an Eat Natural bar or similar)

if you want to try your hand at baking, then this will open up other opportunities, but gf baking can be tricky, and doesn't always turn out like ti should...

There's been another thread running in the last week where someone has been very poorly advised by a GP, so I would be careful about going gf in case it later turns out you need a test doing (it is untrue that there are no tests, depending on what your GP means) and you have to reintroduce gluten and thus make yourself ill in the process.

Where possible avoid gf substitutes as they are mostly awful. You will get used to picking a baked potato or a salad over a sarnie at lunchtime. Think rice and potatoes instead of pasta or bread. Most sausages have wheat in but look out for the Black Farmer Harrogate ones, they are yummy (and widely available). You'll prob need to do more cooking from scratch but things like scrambled eggs can help make this easier to manage mid-week.

Gf pizza bases are tolerable because you mostly just pile other yummy things on them. And fun to do with the kids.

I am coeliac as is my DP. We were diagnosed at a similar time so got used to it together. We do get prescription breads etc which helps, but we do alternatives mostly as it isn't as nice.
So, we eat a lot of rice and potato based dishes, and cook from scratch I'd say 13 out of 14 nights. The remaining night we have something like a pizza made with a ready made GF base, or GF fish fingers, or we eat out.
Breakfasts are either toasted GF bread or GF fruit loaf, a yoghurt, or eggs/ bacon/ pancakes made with GF flour etc.
We don't tend to have GF cereal as it is much more expensive.
We have a lot of jacket potatoes and salads for lunch, and we also have GF crackers with cheese and ham etc. I tend to shy away from sandwiches even with the prescription breads as they are better toasted. Some of the rolls are nice fresh from the oven with soup.
Would it help if I was to post our meal plans for the last couple of weeks?

Whole Foods cornflakes are gf - and not expensive (well, more than Kelloggs, probably, but not stupid gf cereal prices)

available in most supermarkets too.

Sorry, think they're called Whole Earth cornflakes. You'd think I would know, only been staring at the blooming packet at breakfast for the last 4 years

DD1 and DS are gluten, egg and dairy intollerant. DD2, egg, pork and coconut most,y, but also soy.

Bread is a nightmare as most gluten free products contain a lot of egg.

I have discovered a new bread recipe, but need to find a source of tapioca flour that makes sense before I can try it out.

Doves gluten free flour is quite good, but better with extra xanthan gum. Also their rice crispies and corn flakes. Rice flour is good for a crunchy coating for frying etc.

Baked beans are gluten ree and make a filling and nutritious breakfast or lunch.

Thanks so much everyone.

I would really appreciate that TerryWogan if you don't mind. I'm currently using MyFitnessPal to try and lose weight and I'll need to somehow combine the two diets.

Ok, here goes! If you want recipes for any of these then just ask and I'll oblige :)
I just tend to do a list of meals, enough for one week, get the stuff for them and then we pick from them according to what we fancy/ what time we are home/ what's going to go out of date first etc!
We get a veg box delivered so i tend to use that as the starting point for the meal plan.
So here goes:

-Roast chicken and all trimmings ( I have got quite good at GF yorkshires now and gravy is fine, just make it with GF flour.)

-Salmon, new potatoes and broccoli (this is quite a quick meal, salmon just baked in foil with a pat of butter and a sliced line plus salt and pepper. I cooked twice as much salmon so I could use cold for fishcakes later in the week)

-Lamb biryani, with poppadums and chutneys

-Spaghetti bolognese ( with GF pasta)

-Salmon fishcakes / spicy cabbage

-chicken / preserved lemon/ olive tagine with fattoush ( yummy middle eastern salad with toasted pitta etc) and rice.

-pork casserole / mash/ peas

• sweet potato & lentil curry / rice

• chicken and mushroom pie / veg / mash ( GF pastry is quite easy to make and tastes great)

-baked stuffed pancakes

• roast beef and all trimmings

• Mexican sausage pie ( GF sausages)

• Mediterranean baked fish ( one pot dish with loads of lovely Mediterranean roasted veg)

• Tuna empanadas ( I adapted a normal empanada dough recipe to be GF and it's lovely, if a bit of a faff to do- so I normally make loads and we eat them cold in packed lunches or reheated with grated cheese sprinkled on top- yum! I do have a tortilla press though which helps with the process. )

-Chilli con Carne with rice

Let me know if you need any more details on any of these :)

There are tests for intolerances, but you have to be still on gluten when you have them! Sounds like your gp is fobbing you off.

a list of things to look out for in ingredients click here

click here

I got the coeliac society's food and drink directory. Towards the front is a list of gluten containing ingredients to watch out for.

Barley malt flavouring is supposed to be ok, according to some, but it's not for my children. So watch out for that one too. The F&D directory didn't turn out to be that helpful because it worked to something called the 'codex standard' and it's all about the level of gluten in stuff that most can tolerate. Well, my children can't tolerate any! So you really have to be sure that there is no gluten in what you buy.

TWT thankyou. That sounds lovely.

Hec it all sounds so involved. Thanks for the links

Another coeliac here. Just want to reiterate what the other coeliacs above have said about your GP fobbing you off. Totally your choice, but it would be wise to be tested for coeliac before you stop eating gluten. Here's some info from Coeliac UK on how to get diagnosed:

www.coeliac.org.uk/coeliac-disease/how-to-get-diagnosed

The reason why it's important to be properly diagnosed is that if you are coeliac you will get checked for related complications such as osteoporosis which you wouldn't get if you go gluten free without being tested for coeliac (if you were diagnosed). Approx 1 in 100 people in the UK have coeliac but only about 10% have been diagnosed. That's a lot of people walking around not knowing they have it!

Wheat intolerance is different from gluten intolerance, isn't it? If it's wheat you have to avoid, then you can still eat oats, for example, which might help with the breakfast choices.

Looks like you need to go back to the GP and demand more information!