Going gluten-free - where to start? - £200 voucher plus signed copies of Budget Gluten-free to be won

[CeriMumsnet]

Going gluten-free can be a challenge, especially when it comes to budgeting. For those of you who are gluten-free, what would your top tips be? What are your favourite gluten-free products? How do you stick to a budget on a gluten-free diet?

And if you’re just starting or even have been following a gluten-free diet for a while what questions or concerns do you have? Becky Excell, author of new book Budget Gluten Free will be online in the next few weeks to answer some of your questions.

Everyone who posts on this thread by 18 March will be entered into a prize draw where one lucky winner will win a £200 voucher plus a signed copy of Budget Gluten Free by Becky Excell. 9 runners up will also win a signed copy of the book.

*Don't forget to also take part in the poll below about the cost of a gluten-free weekly shop (according to Coeliac cost of living report 2024) - the answer will be revealed on this thread next week!

T&Cs

Once a week I go through my GF recipe book and plan out meals for that week. I stick to buying only what’s on my shopping list.
I buy supermarket own brands for everything possible.
I switch out meat for things like lentils/chickpeas/nuts for 3 meals each week (although as both my Coeliac children are iron deficient I wish I could afford more red meat).

I love Becky Excell’s cooking books.

Use the gluten free scanner when shopping . Steer away from processed GF foods if possible and take probiotics daily.

My family have quite a few coeliacs and we got GF McDonald's in America !

I wish they would do that here. She just has a bunless burger at the moment.

Coeliacs = people with coeliac disease, I think.
Sorry I am grumpy this morning, but my DD is not a coeliac, she is a person who happens to have coeliac disease.

How do you help a child with an already very restricted diet to adjust to a gluten free diet which means they can’t eat most of their preferred foods?

Gluten free goods often have a premium price tag, so we often bake at home to save money. Becky's recipes are fab and we also love the Loopy Whisk blog. Our friends can't tell the difference!

I suspect it's aimed at people who are gluten intolerant or coeliac, as opposed to people who are food faddy. There is no other health benefit otherwise, why would you restrict your diet when there's literally no reason to.

Recent tests look like I'm going to be wheat free (I don't know yet what else I'll have to cut out) so I'm very new to all of this. Horrified that malt vinegar may be an issue and stock cubes. These are things that I never would have even checked!
Are there any other surprising foods that I should check more carefully?

I'm a lone parent recently diagnosed with coeliac myself, and toddler is waiting to be tested too.

Just a few things I have learnt

1. If you can get staples (cereal, breads, pastas) on prescription, just apply! I felt so guilty applying, BUT many of the products have added iron and calcium in them (compared to supermarket products)

1. Hunt out yellow sticker / reduced items in the supermarket. If recently diagnosed, it is a great way to taste test an item to see if you like it at a cheaper price and doesn't feel too disheartening / waste of money if you don't enjoy.

1. As above, but freeze items. Bread is often reduced so can split a loaf or a few rolls into sandwich bags and pop in the freezer for the future.

1. Ive learnt to stop asking cafes and restaurants if they have a GF menu, instead I ask if they are 'coeliac friendly' - the response to this question shows how much the establishment knows about cross contamination and food safety for coeliacs! This has been a gamechanger for me!

1. I find GF treats are expensive (and not many in the packet) in the shops so I either bake my own (thank you Becky Excell) OR I pair a biscuit / slice of cake with another nice treat. For example, I will have 1 biscuit, but might make a cup of hot chocolate or nice tea to go with it. Or i might have a slice of cake, with a nice lemonade. This way it feels like a treat, but I don't end up scoffing the whole pack in one sitting.

Eating healthily, safely and on a budget whilst GF is definitely a challenge, but its about being inventive and having to change your mindset :)

Hot chocolate / milkshakes when out and about .

All of them. I've found potential gluten listed on:

• houmous
• fizzy drinks
• dried fruit
• sugar free sweets
• basically anything that isn't just an actual lump of unadulterated vegetable/meat.

Check everything.

Sometimes the "may contain" warnings are written on an entirely different section of the packet to the ingredients, so check for that too, especially on imported relabelled products which may have information in several different places.

And even after that, use your common sense. I wanted gram flour yesterday. Found it in the usual blocky, yellow thick paper flour bags. Asda had stocked them on the bottom shelf, sitting in a large spill from the 10kg sacks of chapati atta. Nothing printed anywhere on the gram flour bag labels about "may contain", or "produced in a factory which also…", so I guess theoretically safe. But the gram flour was in bags made of folded paper with all kinds of potential ingress points, impossible to rinse clean, and sitting literally in a pile of finely powdered wheat, which clung to the bases of the bags and between the paper folds as I lifted them up. I decided against it. Sure, any other bag I buy could've also been doused in wheat flour before I ever saw it, but you do what you can, I guess.

Jacket potato and filling is my go to lunch instead of sandwiches

My daughter is coeliac. She is also involved in competitive sport so eats a lot. She loves the schar white loaves toasted but we can go through 3 a week. Then bagels: flatbreads etc add to the cost so our bread bill alone for her is well in excess of £60 which is horrifying. Over the last week I have made Becky’s naans and the emergency bread for lunches and they’re great. Can see they will save us a fortune.

Dd was diagnosed just over a year ago at the age of 22 - a lot of the food we ate was already GF but I had to make some tweaks. Like someone said above this can be accompanied by lactose intolerance which has been the case here and also soya - I have become adept at reading labels and eating out is a struggle so we have saved money on that front. One of our major problems has been when ordering GF items on prescription - DD is very careful about ensuring no dairy/soya on the items she requests but she always has to check when picking it up at the chemist as the surgery has a habit of ignoring what she has requested and just listing the first thing they see on their list "as they thought they were all the same!" Dh also can't be trusted to cook as he seems to ignore cross contamination!

We shop around as there can be a big price difference between shops and brands for gf food. Pasta and oats from Morrisons, flour from Asda etc. We do buy lots from the gf aisle like bread, crumpets, crackers. It is expensive but I don't want DC to feel they're missing out any more than necessary. We rarely eat out and never have takeaways. which saves money.

My tip would be to explore foods that are gluten free but not advertised explicitly as such (as in not part of a 'free from' type range). There are a number of websites that advise on own brand supermarket products that fall into this category. I will caveat this by saying I am non-coeliac gluten intolerant, and therefore this may not be suitable for people who are coeliac!

Also, the Betty Crocker Gluten Free cake mix is great, and all their icings are also gluten free (I think) - can be an easy way to get a nice home baked cake without the faff of having to buy all the various ingredients needed for making a gluten free one from scratch.

I would say the biggest thing is planning to cope with being gluten free. I've definitely learnt when going on holiday either in this country or abroad that there are often brilliant options around but they're not always easy to find.
There's nothing worse than wandering around and popping into different places to try and find something gluten free and work out if it's safe and they understand while you're tired and everyone is getting ratty. There has been many an argument without plans.
I always plan ahead, look at menus , research online (TripAdvisor, Facebook etc). Pick somewhere and contact them if necessary but also always have a back up. I once went to the Lake District and there were 10 of us with only me gf. I found a chippy in Ambleside, contacted them to double check they were open, got there on the day and they were closed because of the storm. Travelled to a chippy in bowness and were going to eat in and miss eating as a family. Power cut that was half of bowness and ended two shops up from the chippy. We ended up getting pizza from Booths. Sometimes you have to be flexible. Plan as much as you can and always carry snacks just in case the worst happens and try not to let it upset you. I've definitely had times where I've just had to be happy with any food, whether that's boiled eggs and rice cakes from the services.

I was diagnosed coeliac around 6 months ago - I went to GP as I was having regular vomiting episodes.

I've recently booked a holiday for me and my children for Easter (single parent). We're going all inclusive, I've been saving for this holiday for so long, and am getting really worried about accidentally getting glutened. My symptoms are quite severe and it feels like a nasty case of food poisoning when things flare up, plus aching joints so struggle to walk. If I get glutened there will be no other adult there to care of my kids, take them for meals, go swimming etc, and they would be stuck in the room with me. It's such a big worry for me at the moment.

Does anyone have any advice?

My other question is about oats. I've read that lots of coeliacs avoid oats unless they're gluten free. Does everyone do this?

Asda’s GF range is really good and a decent price - recommend the jammy dodgers!

I would email the hotel ahead of the trip and let them know that you are coeliac and will be very unwell if you have any gluten (including cross-contamination if that is a problem), and ask them about arrangements for guests with allergies or dietary needs.
You can also download cards in any language online, print them out and show them to waiters or hotel staff.
Maybe pick up a supply of snacks at the airport just to make sure you don’t go hungry if there’s any issues.
And don’t be afraid to double check - better to be slightly embarrassed than horribly sick!

I do not have any knowledge about needing a gluten free diet due to intolerance's and can only imagine how difficult it would be, in any financial assistance availble to compensate to cost of the food requirements ?,

No, there isn't.

The previous ability to prescribe alternatives in every health authority was removed when it was trendy to be gluten free on the basis that GF alternatives were cheap and easily accessible now

And then GF went out of fashion in favour of vegan products (containing gluten, usually).

So the companies know that they've got a captive market with no way to avoid them since the prescribing ability has been removed in the vast majority of areas. Hence the £4-5 bags of pasta and loaves of bread.

My nephew is gluten free - after being diagnosed at 16, and having a diet of 'shakes' and a very basic diet whilst the healing process enabled him to tolerate more food. I have found when he comes for tea how difficult it is to maintain a gluten free diet, supermarket gluten free is horrid - so we make our own chicken nuggets, fries after being soaked over night and air fried, and making our own bread. I found it takes lots of trial and error to cook great food, but we are getting there.

We found it very restrictive at first BUT we knew that fresh fruit and vegetables, meat, poultry, fish cheese and eggs are naturally gluten-free, so we always use these as the basis to our meals- making our own pasta and found that aldi's gluten free flour is the best.