Secrets of Mind and Reality

Gluten Free Food

Learning to live on a diet of gluten free food has been a challenge for me and somewhat of an adventure. In the beginning, I didn’t think that it would be so difficult. I figured that it would just involve eating wheat free or specially made gluten free pasta and bread. I didn’t realize that wheat gluten was an ingredient in so many different things. Most processed foods have wheat gluten in them in some form. Although gluten sensitivities vary, for some people even a little bit is too much.

Some people with wheat allergies have an even more difficult situation than I do. In my gluten free diet, I can have certain kinds of wheat with the gluten removed, but people who are allergic to the wheat itself can’t. That means basically no premade baked goods unless they are made of spelt or some other alternative grain. It must be a difficult life.

Fortunately, I live in a good city for alternative diets and lifestyles. Portland has gluten free restaurant food available in many different places. As a matter of fact, your typical vegan restaurant will have a staff so knowledgeable that they can tell you precisely what gluten free food to order. This makes it very easy to eat out with minor inconveniences. Although there are some places you can not go to, about half of the restaurants out there still have some sort of gluten free food.

Of course, I would recommend going out to eat until you are familiar with how to eat gluten free foods. Sometimes you can get surprised by something that isn’t supposed to contain wheat but actually does. It happened to me once, and the results were disastrous. It really hurt my stomach and made me feel sick for the rest of the night. Getting to know what recipes contain gluten can take some time, so stick with things that you are sure you can eat.

Usually, the people I know who have to eat gluten free foods tend to stick with a few favorite restaurants. It is a real hassle to go to some new restaurant and have to worry about whether or not there’s going to be an ingredient in it that makes you sick, so once you find a place that agrees with you, you tend to stay there. The upside is that having a gluten free food diet requires me to cook a lot more. In the long run, this is probably better for my health anyway.