To Be or Not to Be: Gluten Free

In this guest post, Space Girl Organics customer Blythe gives her thoughts on going gluten free:

To Be or Not to Be: Gluten Free

I’ve always straddled the great divide between healthful eating and essentially dumpster-diving with gusto. A typical day can find me eating an organic apple and edamame in one sitting and scarfing down some nuggets and a nice cold one hours later. Cora’s favorite dinner is broccoli (holla! Proud mama!) and hot dogs (oops). Similarly, my husband the hunter will extol the virtues of his wild caught venison and hormone-free, additive-free pork while polishing off a frozen pizza and a cookie sheet of french fries AND two or three frozen burritos to top the whole thing off. (And he only weighs 140. This is just plain wrong, folks.) SO… when the whole gluten-free trend began, I was curious, but then dismissive. No wheat? No junk? No thanks.

But here’s the thing: hubby Nate has some serious joint pain issues. And some serious upset stomach issues. And he just hasn’t found much relief anywhere. So when a friend started telling him about the miracles that gluten-free living has brought to his health, we couldn’t really keep ignoring the benefits of at least TRYING to go gluten-free. Maybe you’re in the same boat. Maybe you’re thinking it could be beneficial, but are a bit overwhelmed by where to begin. If so, read on…

The Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical School both urge people to see if they have gluten sensitivity or celiac disease before going gluten-free. A blood test can lead to a diagnosis. The diet is a pretty stringent one: simply eliminating cereal, bread and pasta isn’t effective since gluten can be found in everything from medicine (as a binding agent) to soy sauce and salad dressing. Nor is it a cure-all for all stomach problems. In fact, going gluten-free can create problems by encouraging vitamin deficiencies. BUT, if you’re going to go gluten-free, you need to become a nutritional label-investigatin’ fool, scouring packages for those tell-tale ingredients: barley, rye, wheat, and triticale. An easier approach is to shop the perimeter of the grocery store, stocking up on fresh fruits, veggies, and proteins. Oddly, gluten can even be found in frozen vegetables, so a back-to-the-farm approach of buying everything fresh truly seems to make life easiest if you’re going to eliminate gluten.

I can’t give you any feedback on where we are yet, because… well, there’s still a six-pack in the fridge, and we’re not going cold turkey ‘til it’s gone. The last of the frozen French fries were consumed last night so slowly but surely we’re putting a halt on our love affair with funky foods. The reality is that, even if gluten doesn’t end up being the cause of Nate’s joint or stomach pains, cutting back on gluten means cutting back on processed foods and focusing instead on what’s right in front of us; we don’t plan on trying to maintain our current lifestyle by purchasing pricey gluten-free cookies and chips and who knows what else—instead, we’re just going to try a simpler diet full of wholesome, fresh foods.