Avoiding gluten is essential for people with celiac disease. This can be done if you are strictly following the rule of ‘no outside food’. But things become a little complicated when you have no control over what your family eats at social settings or in restaurants. These situations can be overcome with some careful planning.
Another important aspect that needs to be understood is that a gluten-free diet for celiac disease doesn’t just mean that you need to avoid ingestion of gluten in all forms, shapes, and ways. This also means that you need to avoid food items that in any way may have come into contact with gluten.
“The popular gluten-free diet versus celiac gluten-free diet are not the same. Someone who has celiac disease has to think about cross contact,” said Venus Kalami – a clinical pediatric dietitian with Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and Stanford Children’s Health.
Kalami said that those who simply want to cut down the consumption of gluten because of some health reasons need not follow that meticulous way of avoiding it. This is why it is obvious for people with celiac disease to be concerned about accidental gluten exposure.
That is why such people need to be proactive and ask about foods that are grilled or fried or served with gravies or sauces. This is because sauces are often made with soy sauce (containing wheat) or thickeners and flours that contain gluten.
You may not realise that roux made from flour is used to make silky cheese sauce. This is something that even the restaurant server may not realise. So restaurants must be serving people with celiac disease the gluten-free noodles but they may not realize that the sauce is not friendly for them.
The alternative to soy sauce is tamari, made of pure soy or gluten-free soy sauce. Other popular foods that may have gluten are gummy candies and licorice. These may contain wheat as a binder. So read labels carefully to choose versions without gluten. Other foods that should be carefully looked before consuming include ice cream toppings and mix-ins. Flavors like cream or cheesecake and cookies contain gluten. In other words, anything that uses a thickener is a high-gluten-risk food.
