Gluten-free Recipes

The Gluten Free Diet

• A gluten free diet is both essential and recommended for people who have gluten induced skin diseases or sensitivities (like the dermatitis herpetiformis) or for those that have coeliac diseases. Usually people follow a gluten free diet when it is medically imperative, although you can take up on such a diet for other reasons like balancing your body out, getting in shape and loosing weight.

• The gluten is a mixture of proteins found mostly in cereals. Scientist have not been able to figure out exactly why this component harms and attacks the gut, but it is considered that the coeliac disease involves the lack or abnormal immunologic responses. Gluten is not harmful to everyone, just a few people that have a negative response to it.

• The celiac disease is a gluten intolerance that affects 1 person out of 133 and is a genetic disorder. Its symptoms are diarrhea, weight loss (even malnutrition) or intestine damage. This disease can easily be traced and combated with the help of a gluten free diet.

• Basically, a gluten free diet involves the complete lack of wheat-type foods from your regime. This includes wheat, rye, barley, pasta, noodles, rye flour, wholemeal, wheatmeal, semolina and oats. You can combine a gluten-free diet with a vegetarian diet, as long as you are able to keep track of what you eat (be advised that your food range will be shortened severely by the two diets). In the long run it might be a really healthy option, although scientists and nutritionists alike, find this combination to be somewhat harmful to the body, as it is to constrictive.

• There are some foods similar to cereals that are allowed in a gluten free diet. These include buckwheat, arrowroot, corn, potato flour, rice, rice flour, sago, soya and soya flour. These food types contain no glutens, although they are from the same family as the gluten-containing wheat-type foods.

• Not only will a gluten free diet provide protection against celiac diseases and skin sensitivities, it will also help you loose a few pounds, as it’s well known that wheat products can quickly increase your weight.