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

I simply can't afford to buy GF processed food. If I'm lucky, there will sometimes be GF bread products in the community fridge, but these are otherwise massively out of budget. Of the ones I have tried, none of them are nice enough to justify heir price tag except for the Schar brand.

I used to live in Italy, and the GF products over there are much nicer (although still really expensive)

I've tried a lot - but Doves farm seem to be the best.

The Warburton pittas are decent, especially lightly toasted. Chicken salad pitta or brush them with garlic butter to eat with curry.

Join a online group like becky excels, you can ask questions or vent. New product recommendations, product changes, missed allergens etc are all shared by the gf community.

Some coeliacs are willing to eat may contains and others won't risk it. I've seen so many arguments about it online, it's not worth getting involved. Sometimes this is because the may contain options are cheaper than the fully gf alternative.

Supermarket own brand tortilla chips, loads of salsa and cheese is low cost and satisfying.

Try to have a meal or 2 in the freezer for days your really struggling or if your family want a takeaway you likely can't have.

I want to try and go gf but it’s bread I’ll miss most! I went gf before and gf bread is terrible…is there a decent homemade version?

This is a good, common sense book for anyone whose child has been diagnosed as coeliac:

amzn.eu/d/fy8UrcK

Gluten free bread is really expensive and not brilliant. I bake my own. I also cook from scratch where possible.

Gluten can cause inflammation even in those who do not have coeliac disease. I suffered from endometriosis and adenomyosis and my nurse specialist advised that some people with those conditions could reduce their pain by cutting gluten out of their diet. I've heard the same for people with autoimmune conditions.

When I first started on my journey my diet looked a bit like I was eating in the 1960s - lots of meat and two veg meals, soups, gluten free oatcakes, fruit, cheese. The unintended health benefit was that I was eating less processed food and lost weight.

I've been gluten-free for 18 months, then my daughter got a diagnosed. My best tips are two experiment and have a go at making things you never would have tried before. I found blogs and books like Becky Excel amazing, I've learned how to make all sorts of things, some took so long I would never make again. My best recipes are gluten-free pizza made with flour and yogurt, super quick and easy and so much cheaper than the supermarket full stop also the fried chicken with corn flakes or potato starch, taste like KFC. I try and avoid the free from Isle I always make my own granola, that is really easy to do and saves the fortune upon cereal especially because bread I make still falls apart. If you are diagnosed gluten-free, my advice is don't give up, get yourself a food mixer by lots of eggs for some reason gluten-free recipe seem to use more, and learn to bake and for your friends were certainly want to eat your gluten-free goodies!

Eat fresh and use things naturally gluten free for better taste and value.

Hello everyone! I wanted to share a little tip that has been a game-changer for my sister. She’s been making her gluten-free flour using Thermomix, and it’s been amazing for both convenience and saving money in the long run.
While the Thermomix can be a bit pricey upfront, it’s worth it when you eat on a budget. Buying gluten-free flour can get very expensive, but with the Thermomix, my sister can make a variety of gluten-free flours (like rice flour, buckwheat, oat flour, etc.) at home for a fraction of the cost and makes it so easy to whip up the flour without any hassle.
It’s an investment that pays off quickly, especially if you bake a lot or need gluten-free flour regularly. Plus, the Thermomix comes with tons of gluten-free recipes. Is anyone else using the Thermomix? I would love to hear about your experiences or any recipe ideas you have!

3 coeliac in the house. My top tips would be to try and eat things which are naturally gluten free. For us we swap couscous for quinoa and crackers for rice cakes.

We were buying the ZENB pea protein pasta (bought in bulk when they had 40% off) but they've recently closed down so now we have swapped normal pasta for rice noodles.

GF oats are reasonably priced and I make overnight oats with chia seeds, nut butters and maple syrup. Delicious!

I use oats with almond butter to make breakfast cookies in the airfryer too which makes a nice biscuit swap.

Other grains I use include amaranth and millet to make porridge but they take much longer so not a "quick breakfast".

Also lots of soups and curries for dinner.

Are there products that are accidentally gluten free that people don't realise, or don't have the same mark up as products labelled gluten free?

Loads. My favourite weird accidental GF product is ASDA fresh (chilled) gnocchi.

@MerlinsBeard87 yes there's loads.
Sainsbury's and M&S are good for them.
You have to trawl the I gredients but it's worth it to save a few pounds because it can literally be pounds!

M&S do very good GF sandwiches great for lunch in the go

Tesco own brand marmite is GF. Marmite isn’t.

such a win!!!!

For me going gluten-free necessitated a complete change of perspective: going without, rather than substituting. So many GF substitutes taste like dust, or are loaded with UPFs, or additives that upset my stomach, that they are really not worthwhile. Some are decent, like corn pasta - unsurprisingly it has very few ingredients. But generally I prefer to eat either naturally GF foods, or just go without.

Fortunately I like baking, and there are plenty of recipes that do not require gluten, so it's easy to make goodies that are not loaded with additives.

Because I don't bother much with substitutes, going GF has not generally been expensive for me. Where it is expensive and awkward is in eating out and in buying snacks on the go.

I too have bought a Panasonic bread machine with the gfcycle. It makes fabulous bread, which is even better toasted. I'm a reasonable cook and I'm now experimenting with gf sourdough.

This makes up for the occasional times I get completely overwhelmed in shops and supermarkets when I get struck by there being so much that I can't have. Or I go to somewhere where I've been told they can or will cater for me, then find they can't or won't. The number of times I've been told that I could just eat the fillings out of wheat bread sandwiches! I miss the choice and freedom of just eating out without planning ahead or having to ask questions which some people interpret as making a fuss.

Also when travelling I've nearly always got a small tin of tuna and a few nuts in my bag, so I've always got something to fall back on.

I've found the introduction of "gluten-free oats" very frustrating. I wonder how many coeliacs can't actually tolerate them - I suspect many more than was initially being claimed. My mother and sister have terrible symptoms if they eat a biscuit made from oat flour; I don't dare try them as my gluten symptoms take weeks to settle down.

The thing is, almost all gf biscuits now have oat flour in. I really miss ginger biscuits :( (have occasionally made my own).

Like others on this thread, I aim for my main diet to be naturally gluten free, and only get bread/pasta now and then. If I'm baking I mostly use Asda flour mixes which are cheaper than Doves Farm and nearly as good. The plain mix benefits from a bit of xanthum gum if you're using it for cakes, the self-raising already has some in.

A tip - a little late for pancake day sorry! - "glutinous rice flour" as found in specialist Asian shops, is a finer milled rice flour that has in some way been processed with water already. I find using it half and half (or a little less) with standard rice flour or other gf plain flour mix, works really well for crepe type pancakes.

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for your comments and questions so far, great to see so many fantastic gluten-free tips. I'm going to share my answers to some of your questions, as well as some of the things that help me budget on a gluten-free diet - I hope you find them useful!

Hi @HobNobAddict That’s tough one! Mainly because it’s more advisable to use a blend of multiple naturally gluten-free flours (for both bread and pasta) rather than just using one. A blend of multiple different flours allows the different properties of each naturally gluten-free flour to band together and compensate for each other’s weaknesses (ie. rice flour can be extremely dry, cornflour can be very sticky, chickpea flour can bring an unwanted flavour) as well as combining their strengths (eg. millet flour has great flavour, tapioca starch adds stretch, rice flour often has the more expected colour we want). Not surprisingly, this all becomes extremely important when you don’t have the elasticity and strength that gluten naturally provides!

The health benefits of a gluten-free diet are obviously huge for those who have
Coeliac disease - for the easing of immediate symptoms and restoration of quality of life, as well as preventing long term gut damage. However, for most of the general population who don’t need to be gluten-free, there isn’t especially any magic health benefit if your body has no issues with gluten! After all, things like whole wheat flour, rye, oatmeal, barley would then become off-limits, and restriction for no reason is never ideal, so you have to bear that in mind.

Hi @benjaminjamesandgraham - Often with difficulty! In the UK, budget supermarkets don’t have gluten-free sections and it usually means that we either can’t shop there, or we have to go to more than one supermarket to complete our weekly shop; gluten-free sections are where we’ll need to get essentials like bread, cereals, pasta and flour. Of course, it could be easy to make an argument that you could ditch all of the essentials - but they are called essentials for a reason! Plus, the less choice we have in the products we consume, the harder it becomes for the average person to eat well. That being said, there is a huge amount of naturally gluten-food across every supermarket. Once you learn to read labels and know how to check for whether a product contains or may contain gluten you will suddenly find a lot of products are
safe across the supermarket.

Hi @ItalianChineseIndianMexican You most definitely have to be more savvy when it comes to being on a gluten-free diet, otherwise your weekly shop can suddenly skyrocket. With gluten-free bread being up to seven times more expensive than regular bread and other everyday essentials like flour, cereals and pasta often being twice as expensive as their gluten-containing counterparts, you don’t have much other choice! Yet, my philosophy to being gluten-free on a budget doesn’t revolve around advising people to abstain from these products entirely (they’re called essentials for a reason!) or investing the time and effort to start making their own. Instead, I’ve found it far easier and more instantaneous to ‘make room’ for these more expensive essentials in your
weekly food shop budget; for example, how many ‘big brand’ products could be
subbed for more affordable alternatives? How much money could you save by
dodging costly convenience products? How many ‘premium’ ingredients (like
Parmesan for example) can be swapped for effective alternatives? Combine these savvy shopping questions with enjoying more naturally gluten-free meals, cost- effective cooking from scratch and more meat-free meals and you’ll always find room to offset the cost of using costlier gluten-free products when you need them.

Hi @MindfulAndDemure Yep, stock cubes are definitely one to watch out for! Of course, as a general rule of thumb, it’s good practice to get in the habit of reading the ingredients lists on everything when you first start a gluten-free diet - namely because of examples like this where you might not expect to find gluten! Plus, even if you’ve been gluten-free many years, checking products you buy on the regular occasionally is wise too as sometimes the ingredients might change over time without any warning. Often people are surprised to find gluten in everything from soy sauce, baking powder, gravy, sausages and many condiments too - in these cases wheat flour is used to either thicken or bulk out the product and you’ll need to find a gluten-free alternative. However, for Coeliacs, you’ll need to watch out for products with a ‘may contain’ warning for gluten too which can pop anywhere from salt and pepper to beansprouts, so as I said, be prepared to check everything!

Hi @AllBranEater Yep, exactly! Relying on naturally gluten-free carbs like rice and potato a little more often can help to make room in your weekly food shop budget for that costly loaf of gluten-free bread, so you won’t feel like you have to abstain from ever eating it. After all, if you enjoy a sandwich for lunch, you won’t get far in achieving that with a potato! Yet if a sandwich is your go-to for lunch, incorporating other similarly easy-to- prepare, naturally gluten-free options for lunch is also wise; plus, a little variety is surprisingly nice to break the sandwich cycle!

By far, cities like Rome and Barcelona have some mind-blowing gluten-free bakeries and restaurants where everything on the menu is gluten-free yet nobody would ever notice the difference. You’ll even find gluten-free McDonald’s burgers there too! However, I would always advise doing a little research before you go first as how else will you know which restaurants/bakeries you need to head to or where they are?! Often people see online that a place like Rome is highly recommended for gluten-free eaters, but then are confused when they pop into any old restaurant and aren’t catered for at all. That’s because, though these two cities have far more places that cater for us than here at home, it’s certainly not the case that you’ll also be able to eat everything at any restaurant in the entire city! I also name the cities here specifically (and not the entire country) as, just because one of their cities caters well, that by no means that the rest of the country is on the same page!

Doing research ahead of booking a holiday is key and asking lots of questions once you are there is even more important!