About twp years ago i went privately for a food intolerance test re my IBS. It was suggested I go gluten & dairy free which I did & continued for over a year. Doing this didn't make much difference to my IBS symptoms so I gave up the gluten free but carried on with being dairy free. But I still bought the gluten free crumpets because I really liked them ( 2 or 3 packets a week) At the last price increase to £ 2-10 for 4 crumpets I stopped buying them. I don't know if there is any connection or just coincidence but I have been feeling a lot better lately for about 3 weeks & looking in my food dairy noticed I haven't eaten crumpets for over a month. Here is a list of ingredients.
I paid for a 'York' test, (for intolerances) it cost £300. The result was... Intolerant to yeast, (flagged red), wheat (flagged yellow), and then dairy ....to some extent.
After consulting my GP about this. He told me to eat as normal, (gave me mebeverine in case my gut played up) and then after a week or so I took a blood test. No inflammation anywhere in my system. Diagnosed with IBS-d, mainly due to my anxiety. No regrets now, except for throwing away £300.
I did the same. My GP said that intolerance to gluten, etc was extremely rare and with sensible dietary habits people wouldn't need to buy expensive gluten free badged products. He thought it was just another way for some "health experts" and the Food Industry to extract money from people. Took his advice and have been fine. Fernsmum I think hit it on the head. Pleased to hear you are feeling better.
I think it would be hard to tell if any of these ingredients irritated your gut, without testing them one by one, or noticing if any other food you can happily eat contains any of these ingredients, but not something else on the list.
I wonder about Xanthan gum? I think I have heard that it doesn't suit some people, but I can't remember who said that or where.
But it could be any of these. It depends on you, and how sensitive you are to whatever it is.
I had a similar thing with bottled water. I only noticed my symptoms improved when I (accidentally) bought a few packs of low mineral bottled water. It seemed to be mostly connected with the Bicarbonate content of the water.
I thought I had that sorted, until I went to a gathering at the end of September where I drank about eight wine glasses of high Bicarbonate water and was fine in the next few days!! And have had flare ups recently while drinking the low mineral water. So I don't know if that's relevant any more.
Hi I am gluten free but unless I really feel like it I don't eat GF anything thats made specifically as GF except the M&S bread. The biscuits, cakes etc are all so full of additives and I always feel dreadful afterwards. So my advise is if your GF, Vegan or anything else, follow the diet using natural ingredients with as little as possible other (heavily marketed as healthy) foods. 🙃
Many of these tests are unregulated and are scientifically dubious - this is why they are not available through the NHS. Some of the people who offer these tests are salesmen not clinically or professionally trained.When we don't get answers from mainstream health providers it's natural to start clutching at straws - and I don't blame anyone for trying to get a solution to a very confusing illness. Unfortunately these tests give simple solutions to a complex problem. If it were as simple as a just a skin test / finger prick blood test / whatever then don't you think that mainstream professionals healthcare would be offering these tests?
Dietary changes will help many people in many cases, but not everyone. Plus, it's not always clear cut as to what changes are needed in any one individual. IBS isn't a simple thing.
If you look at the ingredients lists on GF, vegan foods etc, even cholesterol lowering spreads, they are all from factories, with little or no ingredients that can be related to food! GF for coeliacs is very expensive, and used not to be very nice to eat. Now, there are several sites on the internet where someone has done all that hard work and produces recipes for GF, intolerances etc, from everyday ingredients. SO, get cooking and leave the ready meals, and prepared foods on the shelves-go back to basics and your body will thank you for it!
Like you, I had to give up crumpets & felt that important bit ‘better’…thinking outside the box: aren’t crumpets ‘twice cooked’? ie partially baked before packaging & distribution & then reheated before eating?
Am mentioning this because my gastroenterology clinic specialist nutritionist has warned me to avoid anything twice cooked, reason being that twice cooked starches tend to become digestion-resistant. Eg reheated baked potatoes, reheated scones, reheated noodles & rice etc etc. After extensive investigations, my gastroenterology team have diagnosed me with visceral hypersensitivity that includes severe adverse reactions to food fobre & food residue of all types, which is why digestion resistant starch triggers trouble for me
But there is a school of thought that this type of starch can be good for some people…this link gives a good article on pros & cons of resistant starch:
There is no test for food intolerance apart from an elimination and reintroduction diet. Food intolerance tests can make people eliminate foods that they are actually tolerant to.
The only thing I can think of in the ingredient list is the potato starch. When potatoes are cooled or reheated, they become resistant starch. This is the same for rice. Resistant starch acts as a prebiotic for gut bacteria. If you have a dominance of bad bugs in the gut, you will be feeding the bad bugs too, which might mean you'll get symptoms.
Having said all of this, everyone's reactions to different foods can be completely different from one another, so theories don't always stand in every case.
Back to the question about going completely gluten free when you are not coeliac, I have read some studies that have shown that people who eat gluten can have a better abundance of good gut bacteria than those who don't consume gluten at all purely for lifestyle reasons. Having no gluten at all can skew gut bacteria to increasing the number of bad bugs in the gut.
Ultra Processed foods are not good for us - it's a shame as the GF crumpets are tasty! - but they are meant to be, the food industry is so cynical. Listen to the "thorough examination" podcasts bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017tcz
Thank you to everyone who has commented or made suggestions. I think we should all look closely at processed food labels & especially at the new ranges of substituted meat foods aimed at vegans & vegetarians as well as the gf foods. These are all relatively "new" with so many food producers jumping in the "healthy" bandwagon. We don't know what the long term effects of these foods will have on our bodies. We need to go back to the good old days & cook proper food from scratch.
HiI'm supposed to be gluten intolerant after doing a private test.
However, sometimes I eat normal bread as eating gf bread, was just horrible to me . Sometimes I get away with it, sometimes I don't, depending on how much wheat I consume. I have However, found I can't eat onions anymore. Noway . I love onions too, so it's a real battle for me to give them up.
Mind you, after a bad bout of stomach pain and having to run to the toilet, it shouldn't be really .
I'm post meno, and I think everything changes at this time of life.
Thank you Luisa22 (Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids, Polyglycerol Esters of Fatty Acids) As I exoect you already know is an ingredient in Genius crumpets.
Well, I didn't know, as I've never eaten those crumpets. But that additive clearly gave me a slightly upset gut the other day, I have been fine since. E476 is derived from the castor bean. I remember castor oil being used as a powerful laxative when I was a child. E476 may be different in manufacture, but same source.
It is deemed "safe"as a food additive. It probably doesn't upset lots of people. It was OK in rat studies. But IBS people have sensitive guts.
I've been going through my fridge & cupboards today & so far have found 2 items I buy every week that contain (Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids, Polyglycerol Esters of Fatty Acids). Asda's pate & tinned ham. Maybe they don't affect me like they do you but I'm seriously thinking about not buying them any more. Maybe we should start a thread where people can add their nasty findings on food they eat.
In my case it would be the xanthan gum. Apparently a lot of people have a problem with it - my reaction to it is so bad I nearly ended up in hospital. This is extreme, I know, but at least I know to avoid it. I don't know if my reaction now is so bad because it wasn't used so much in the past, or maybe I'd rarely eaten it previously? I found out because of the fodmap diet - I was avoiding eating gluten to see if that was what I was reacting to and my ibs got worse. Seems a lot of gluten free food uses xanthan gum to replace the yeast. It's also in a lot of other foods and, bizarrely, moisturisers and hair products, so I'm one of the odd people you see in shops peering closely at the ingredients lists on everything!
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