I have been reading a lot of CD posts on Facebook and other blogs lately and I would say 85% of them are about the latest GF processed food/ready meal and whether we can eat them safely. Or the ongoing debate about whether 20ppm is safe and for me it is not but it may be for others. I don't actually understand how any gluten can be safe and I certainly have a reaction to the allowed levels in GF foods and to oats but I understand that others don't. I am still trying to understand the science of this. However even sticking to a strictly GF diet, I still have lots of choice and don't miss processed foods at all. Perhaps it's because I live in Italy where we have much less access to such things, for example most supermarkets only carry a very limited range of ready meals and deserts and they are filled mainly with great veg, fish, meat, cheese, tomatoes, pulses, fruit, pasta including GF, rice, dairy ( you can't buy GF bread in the supermarket you must go to the chemist and even the best of those might have at most 3 shelves of pasta, bread, cakes, biscuits and flours) so everyone here cooks from scratch. So I find it strange that we seem to have got a bit obsessed on the latest offerings in the free from aisle when the majority of food is naturally GF. I am not saying that we shouldn't want choice and to be included and to have cakes etc as an occasional treat. But surely we should all be trying to eat less of those things anyway whether we are coeliac or not.
Processed foods and CD. : I have been... - Gluten Free Guerr...
Processed foods and CD.
Well said!
I guess that when first having to go gluten-free people reach for the equivalent to their old gluten food.
Attitudes towards food seem to differ across different countries. Ready made food in the UK has been made to be really cheap, it's a real money maker for the manufacturers and supermarkets, and it's heavily advertised. Perhaps some people feel this is the norm, and that cooking from scratch is reserved for TV chefs.
I agree with you about avoiding most 'free from' food. I don't miss processed food and think I am much healthier without it.
The Gluten Free diet ie up to 20ppm gluten free or up to 100ppm very low gluten is only there for those who can tolerate it. It is not the treatment for the condition, it is getting a lot of hype because there are more who can tolerate than those who cannot. When buying GF foods take a look at the ingredients, these have or are switching from derivatives to addatives like E464 or Hydroxypropylmethycellulose which may cause other problems.
There a other choices of food and little need to go on the "Strict" GF ie eating 20ppm of gluten. If a Coeliac learns the names of the ingredients in processed foods the choice is far greater. I am always ill when eating anything labelled "GF"
I consider the gluten free diet to be exactly that no gluten at all. I can't tolerate even the 20ppm. In Italy we have very little food called GF that contains things such as codex wheat, oats, maltodextrin, barley malt extract. Here my labelled GF food is made with rice, buckwheat, maize, or quinoa and not a sign of these additives. Having said that the choice of GF is narrow basically pasta, awful bread and a few cakes and biscuits.
I agree Mia, my main reasons for staying off processed GF food is the price and the fact that they are generally full of rubbish. I too prefer to eat whole foods where possible but there are a lot of people who don't have the time, skills or the money to do so.
With a little effort it is possible though and well worth it, I believe I have a much healthier diet now that I am restricted in the foods I eat and that my knowledge about food and diet is so much better now.
Every cloud........
It's interesting that life is so different in different countries. Here in Italy no-one really has the choice not to cook as there are so few ready meals available. In my local supermarket (a large Carrefour ) there is apart from non GF Pizza only 2 ready meals actually available (stuffed pancakes and fish fingers) and some breakfast cereals. The freezers and the shelves are full of things that you need to combine to make a meal and apart from the bakery sections and the pasta most of it is GF. We have shelves with 9 different types of tuna or beans or tomatoes or rice but a single small row of tins or packets of soup. It's not necessarily better just different but it makes a sharp contrast to a supermarket in the UK with lots of ready prepared things on offer.
On the whole I agree, but not all naturally gf foods end up gf because of where they are processed ie they get contaminated. Also there is a place for processed foods, I home cook all our foods as myself and two kids are coeliac. My eldest is at school and the school dinners aren't great for coeliacs so I send a lunchbox in, being able to buy a decent gf bread or roll that doesn't gave to be baked fresh every few days is a godsend, same goes for gf pasta, he likes pasta meals with homemade sauces but I don't have time or inclination to make gf pasta. When he goes to parties it's nice that he doesn't have to be different. More importantly there being demand for gf products means that more and more processing plants will have to start handling gf which is a good thing, not for processed food, but for food availability in general - great to cook from scratch but not do great when you can't get staples without travelling miles of taking out a second mortgage to pay for them. 
I agree I also buy GF pasta but I am lucky there to be in Italy where my choice of GF pasta is huge. However no GF pasta here contains any gluten at all. They are all made from either rice, or corn, or buckwheat, or recently quinoa. I gave up on GF bread a long time ago. I can't tolerate codex wheat and the taste and texture of most of them left me thinking they weren't worth eating. Now I make a stack of buckwheat and chestnut flour pancakes every week and freeze them and just fill them like wraps for lunches. Also here in Italy most of the GF bread is even worse than in the UK as Italians don't eat bread like genius or Warburtons but local bread baked in a local bakery everyday. So there are no big mass producers and so no market.
Like the sound of your pancakes- what else goes in them?
I think the difference you're seeing is to do with the difference in national food culture generally and the fact that British posters are in the majority on the online boards. I'm sure there must be millions in Italy also that live off processed foods and think fast food burgers are a nice treat, but not to the extent in the UK and probably not with the same degree of social acceptance and visibility. Being gluten free is in some ways easier than being an ordinary "foodie" in the average British office or factory!
I suspect so. I think the issue in Italy is that processed foods are just not available apart from Pizza, breakfast cereals, a very small selection of soups packets not canned, stuffed pancakes and fish fingers, a few packets of burgers and cakes and biscuits. The average Italian supermarket doesn't carry ready meals or much processed food. The shelves and I am in my local large supermarket while I write this are filled with 2 aisles of pasta including GF, an aisle of baking stuff including GF flours like rice, chickpea, buckwheat, corn. A whole section of polenta some of which are quick cook with added things like truffles or chilli pepper.(This would be considered a fast food here) A whole aisle of tomatoes, beans, and other pulses and veg. There is no canned meat products a huge range of tuna and fish products. A whole section of rice. Fruit juice , alcohol, a large cheese section, a bakery section as Italians buy fresh bread every day. and of course a huge deli section of meats and sausages etc and a huge fresh meat, fresh fish and fresh veg sections all of which are GF. It is in really sharp contrast to my experience in the UK. Certainly people do go out to eat but there is not many burger joints except in the big cities.
You're making me want to move to Italy! I think the difference in food cultures is massive though and the UK has always been more industrialised and is unlikely to be changing now. Is there much awareness of gluten-free issues in Italy, ie, do people in restaurants understand about contamination? I've been to Italy a few times, but not since being GF.
Hi freelancer, in Italy school children are tested for CD so they are very aware of it and hence very savvy. Also in Italy they have local bakeries because they do not get long life bread on prescription. They are much keener on shopping locally rather than depending on super markets so have a very different ethos to what they eat.
A good example of how Italians see food is the slow food movement which was started when Mac Donald's wanted to build a burger bar on the Spanish steps of Rome.
I have never been glutened in an Italian restaurant here. I tell people I am coeliac and most of them say no problem we have coeliac pasta and away I go. We now have a number of GF bakeries and my favourite restaurant in Rome has two separate kitchens one completely GF.
I went to italy with my family this year, very impressed, many gluten free signs up, no problem finding things i could eat- only problem was resteraunts and five people- very expensive! Next time self catering
Hi Mia, some very good points here and there was an interesting article on the BBC and that said how we assume that if a food is in the free from isle then it would be healthy when that was far from the truth and it summed up with free from what! as many are packed with fat and artificial sugars and a myriad of additives.
But there are many naturally gluten free ready made dishes like onion bhaji's which are made with simple ingredients and use gram flour (chickpea flour) Falafels are also made with chick peas and should be gluten free, obviously cross contamination is an issue with both.
Not long after I was diagnosed a local shop cafe that made gf dishes also sold falafels and onion bhaji's on Saturdays and they were delicious but there was a lack of demand so they stopped making them but they still make falafels and make them separately and keep them gf so I regularly buy them they are also only £1.00 for 3.
I love bhajis and make them a lot so simple. Unfortunately even the Indian restaurants in Rome don't serve them.
We find it depressing that the original need for gluten free food came about because of coeliac disease and now the term gluten free has been modified to mean less than 20ppm (in the UK anyway, we are in Australia so we are still less that 3ppm at this stage). This new range means the food that was developed for CD is no longer safe for many who live with the disease. Is that not ironic? Although I won't slam the people who choose a gluten free diet because I believe without them we might be even further back in the dark ages, it seems wrong that gluten free food now meets their needs but not those with coeliac disease deglutenous.com.
I agree
How strange that people feel that giving up processed food is a problem. I come from a Coeliac family...............father, sister, cousins and now even a very young grandchild. The secret is to cook from scratch and feel so lucky that a diet without any rubbish is wonderful. Get cooking and feel grateful that we have a condition that we can treat without any meds!
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