Gluten Free?

[Three Valves]

Don’t sweat it. Just have Chinese delivered!!

[alfredr]

Pretty certain that gluten is almost exclusive to wheat. Just don't give him any bread or rolls with his steak and potatoes. For her, fish, chicken, or pork, the other white meat, or possum, the other, other white meat.

[Three Valves]

When they object to the killing of animals for food, just say the possum was already dead!!

[windshieldbug]

When they object to the killing of animals for food, just say the possum was already dead!!

And tell them that plants scream on VHF when they're harvested.
If they had any conscience at all they would become Breatharians.

[Donn]

As you surmise, potatoes and meat have no gluten. Lots of gluten in wheat, apparently some in other cereal grains. The serious gluten-avoiders will give up beer, for example, because of what must be a very tiny amount of gluten that sneaks in from the barley. There's some hucksterism in this - feel free to take him apart if he pushes either of a couple of big selling books - but also apparently something real to it for some individuals. When you take stock of the weird stuff people eat these days - like hot dog buns that apparently could last for months in the bag, where buns made out of ordinary flour and yeast would be stale in a day and fully consumed by mold in two weeks - it's surprising that more weird things don't happen to our digestive systems. (Some of the peculiar properties of commercially prepared breads like that, by the way, are "conditioners" created by added enzymes, "factory" proteins that create other chemicals. They're just protein, with no significant health issues of their own, and the factory that only adds the enzyme isn't required to list as ingredients the chemicals the enzyme creates.)

[roweenie]

Meat and potatoes are naturally GF, but the SPICES that you might use to prepare/flavor them might not be. Reading labels is critical.

I take issue with the use of the word "zealot". Is he GF because of a medical reason, such as celiac disease? If so, would you call someone with diabetes who avoids sugar a "zealot"?

https://celiac.org/about-celiac-disease ... ac-disease" target="_blank

Read the link above - since it doesn't affect them directly, most people don't really know very much about celiac disease. You may learn something - I was diagnosed at 52 years old, and boy did I learn a lot about it, the hard way (of course).

It's bad enough that I and others have to follow this $hitty diet (believe me I wouldn't if I didn't have to) but the added stress of having to deal with the negative attitude of those around me, and the anxiety of eating somewhere where you have no control over the ingredients, makes it 100x worse.

roweenie "try walking a mile in another man's shoes"

[iiipopes]

I have a cousin with Celiac disease, so I understand. Here is one link to help:
https://glutenfreeonashoestring.com/bas ... free-diet/" target="_blank

[bort]

Attempting to be a good host is admirable, but for important dietary restrictions, i think the person affected needs to be involved in the planning.

Not to say "its your problem to deal with," but a lot of people probably just don't understand gluten restrictions... and certainly not to the degree that the affected person does.

[roweenie]

Attempting to be a good host is admirable, but for important dietary restrictions, i think the person affected needs to be involved in the planning.

Not to say "its your problem to deal with," but a lot of people probably just don't understand gluten restrictions... and certainly not to the degree that the affected person does.

Agreed, when possible.

It is very difficult for a person who doesn't have restrictions like these to understand what it's truly like to be forced to live this way. When you stop to think about it, much of a person's social life revolves around dining and drinking - having such an all-encompassing (since gluten is virtually found in almost all prepared dishes) medically necessary diet restriction can easily take all of the spontaneity (and fun!) out of these important social settings. In effect, every meal needs to be planned like a military campaign.

I really dislike getting on this soapbox, but a little bit of understanding goes a long way - you deal with it when you're in my company, while I deal with it every moment of my life.

[bort]

Obviously different in a lot of ways...

...but for a while back in college, I was a vegetarian (started as a bet, but then I enjoyed it and stuck with it... well, until Thanksgiving).

Going home to visit my parents was a challenge, because they just didn't understand it, or how it worked. Wait, so you can eat chicken, right? Oh... its vegetables only, right? How about eggs? Cheese? What's a vegan?

They wanted to help, but wow, those were some gross and hungry meals I ate at their house during that time. I can't imagine if it was something like gluten sensitivity that would have actually caused physical problems...

[iiipopes]

I'm particular sympathetic to these problems, because I myself am a glutton.

Yes, but are you a gluten glutton? (bread, pasta, sweet rolls, donuts, etc.

[Dan Schultz]

One of my daughters is gluten free freak. When she comes to family dinners she brings her own grub for her and one of her sons. Problem solved.

[Donn]

I just brought home a 25 lb sack of exceptionally gluten-ous Graincraft Power Flour (14% protein) and am really delighted with it for bread. Getting pretty near the bottom of my 25 lb Azure Unifine bread flour. Also have durum flour for noodles, pastry flour for biscuits, some all purpose unbleached to fill in the cracks. A celiac diagnosis would be rather disappointing. But a musical colleague who recently went there, also in her 50's, seems to feel pretty good about saying goodbye to the mysterious ailments that plagued her before she knew.

The reason there's an attitude around gluten-free, is the quackery. A couple of big selling books cashed in on it, eagerly passed around via online media without much critical analysis, the one I remember written by someone whose other gig was hyperbaric treatments in Florida. None of this having anything to do with the relatively rare celiac condition, but rather trying to convince us, as my neighbor firmly believes, that wheat is an insidious natural poison. Guys in suits and pony-tails lecturing credulous foodies about the genetic uniformity of wheat, when anyone with a slight familiarity with it as a crop could name several general types (red/white, spring/winter etc.) and a midwest extension service could fill you in on the dozens of varieties available within one of those types, and then pasta is durum which doesn't even have the same number of chromosomes. I guess it's a sign there's plenty, when a culture is so eager to be afraid of their food. But on the bright side, while it leads to an attitude, there's a much larger market for gluten-free food.

[Bowerybum]

' "funny how I'm not down a couple of clothes sizes, and my feet/knees feel better."
Mr. Bloke, Did you mean to say "not down" or "now down"? The last time I did what I called at the time
the half-*** Atkins diet, the pounds fell off and I felt better in every other way. Just curious. Truthfully,
it's the only diet that ever worked for me.

[roweenie]

The reason there's an attitude around gluten-free, is the quackery. A couple of big selling books cashed in on it, eagerly passed around via online media without much critical analysis, the one I remember written by someone whose other gig was hyperbaric treatments in Florida. None of this having anything to do with the relatively rare celiac condition, but rather trying to convince us, as my neighbor firmly believes, that wheat is an insidious natural poison. Guys in suits and pony-tails lecturing credulous foodies about the genetic uniformity of wheat, when anyone with a slight familiarity with it as a crop could name several general types (red/white, spring/winter etc.) and a midwest extension service could fill you in on the dozens of varieties available within one of those types, and then pasta is durum which doesn't even have the same number of chromosomes. I guess it's a sign there's plenty, when a culture is so eager to be afraid of their food. But on the bright side, while it leads to an attitude, there's a much larger market for gluten-free food.

All true, especially the larger market bit - over all, the situation is truly a double-edged sword....I simply can't imagine what it must have been like for people with celiac "back in the day". Also, the Internet and smart phones make it much easier to find celiac-friendly restaurants "on the fly".

(For clarification, please understand that I eat GF with great reluctance - if it weren't a medical necessity for me, I wouldn't be doing it. Before I was diagnosed, some of my favorite foods were pasta and bagels, two things that are almost impossible to do well without gluten )

[Three Valves]

GF spaghetti and spaghetti squash are good substitutes.

Can’t help with the ravioli or bagels though...

[Donn]

If I had to cook up something for the gluten free contingent, gluten free "pasta" would be a last resort. If you need it for an creation that's so great it doesn't matter what the "pasta" is like, fine, but ... for example, corn tortillas should be gluten free, and there's lots of options there. Potatoes as mentioned above, and there are plenty of things you can do with rice. If there are Ethiopians in the vicinity, it's possible you can get injera. Plantains - take a trip to Puerto Rico and try some tostones and amarillos, plantains can be real good eating (and then there's mofongo for the intrepid diner.)

[roweenie]

A "gluten-free" pizza - it just seems to be - would be pretty easy:

> Run a knife between the toppings and the dough.
> Eat the toppings.
> Feed the pizza dough to the dog or to the chickens.

I can't tell whether this is a joke (your tongue-in-cheek style can sometimes be misleading), or a statement from someone who is uninformed (I'll assume the latter until I hear otherwise).

https://www.beyondceliac.org/gluten-fre ... s-contact/" target="_blank

https://gluten.org/resources/cross-contamination/" target="_blank

(Actually, some of the commercially available GF pizzas are pretty good).

[windshieldbug]

I think what bloke was looking for was a certified "Glutton Free" pizza...

[roweenie]

again...I'm not eating any gluten these days, anyway.
I've been too much of a glutton for too long, and gluten contributes to gluttony.

bloke "trying to abandon gourmand-ism to embrace gourmet-ism, and becoming less-and-less tolerant of obesity"

Wow, I didn't know that, bloke - however, if you don't have a medical reason for abstaining from gluten, why would you subject yourself to it? I would think the key would be to avoid carbohydrates in general, not just specifically gluten-based ones.

As we get older, we need to be more health conscious, that is if the goal is to continue to get older....IMHO, the folks who get jammed up are the ones who treat their 55+ year-old body as though it is still 25.....

If you don't have a medical issue (like celiac), removing the pizza crust is entirely doable - unfortunately for me, it's not an option

roweenie "everything in moderation"