Gluten-free through life – Fiqihislam.id

What is the process from the diagnosis of gluten intolerance? What problems do you encounter and how can you practically deal with the allergy?

Diagnosis

And then suddenly the diagnosis is there. Now you think the whole story will start moving, but that was disappointing. The pediatrician still advises you to visit a dietician, but since this person has to be paid for himself (no reimbursement) and there are many stories about dieticians who know less about gluten-free food than the patient/parents, this does not really offer the help after which you are looking for.It is wise to become a member of the Dutch Celiac Association, where you can share experiences with others through the various forums and receive a lot of information about gluten allergy.

Biggest influence

The biggest influence on life is continuous hand washing, a gluten-free corner in the kitchen and eating and baking normal bread. Keeping the gluten-free products separate makes a complete change in the home.Washing your hands also goes a long way and almost every day you come to the conclusion that something has gone wrong again. Some examples that come across a lot;

Slice cheese for your own bread, and then grate this cheese over the gluten-free macaroni.
Without washing your hand, take a candy or cookie from the tin with gluten-free sweets and cookies.
Spread bread with the same butter that is used to spread normal bread.

What now

It is really a search for what is allowed and what is not and what options there are to be able to eat “normally”.

Bread

Bread in particular is a difficult product. After first buying pre-packed bread and bread from the freezer a number of times, we started baking ourselves. Experience shows that the first loaves usually fail completely. But after much trying and mixing of the different types of flour available, this effort usually yields the desired result at some point.

Pastas

Macaroni, spaghetti, lasagna, all these products contain gluten and are therefore no longer permitted. Fortunately, the AH and health food stores in particular have a large selection of gluten-free pasta. But then you come to the sauces. Almost all sauces in the store contain wheat or other gluten-containing ingredients. Fortunately, ketchup does offer a solution, although one brand is suitable and another brand is not. We have recently started making our own pasta sauce and it is going well. There are several nice recipes from bolognese sauce to cheese sauce to cream sauce. Making these sauces is easy in terms of time, and making something extra for the freezer works great.

Cookies, chips and candy

Finding gluten-free cookies in the store with the regular cookies is not possible. All cookies contain gluten, except meringues. Once again, the AH and health food stores have a wide range of gluten-free cookies, so this does not have to be a problem.Candy is another story. This is where it comes down to reading the ingredients. AH has a gluten-free logo on the packaging, which makes searching for gluten-free sweets much easier. Especially in the beginning, reading the ingredients will be difficult and then this is a great solution. Chocolate is also allowed as long as it doesn’t contain a cookie like in the Twix. Only chocolate is a better alternative.There is also a big difference in the chips. Natural is often allowed, while the paprika chips from the same brand do contain gluten. Once again it is good to search and look at the ingredients. Corn chips or prawn crackers are also a great alternative .

Birthday and treat

We have now completed our daughter’s first gluten-free birthday. With homemade gluten-free cake (gluten-free cake base, meringue cake with fruit and whipped cream), snacks and treats. It is especially nice if the person who has to eat gluten-free can eat everything.For the birthdays of children’s classmates, their own container with different types of candy and cookies is often sufficient. The teacher can then choose something from this that matches the treat of the children in the class.

Fries and snacks

Fries are of course no problem, provided they are fried in a separate fryer in which no gluten-containing snacks have been fried. Now all standard snacks in the supermarket contain gluten (breadcrumbs in hamburgers, croquettes and frikadellen). McDonald’s is an excellent solution for this, although our local snack bar is also very well informed about what gluten allergy entails and also bakes the fries separately. So we have a fryer exclusively for fries and bake a gluten-free frikadel in this fryer (available at Jumbo and some health food stores). We fry the non-gluten-free frikadellen in a frying pan.Particular attention must be paid to the mayonnaise and chip sauce . One brand is gluten-free, while the other is not. This also applies to ketchup and curry. Almost all brands of peanut sauce contain gluten. Of the brands we know, only the AH own brand peanut sauce that still needs to be made is gluten-free. However, the ready-made peanut sauce does contain gluten.

Conclusion

All in all, it is very easy to eat and cook gluten-free. It is recommended that you always check the packaging, also because the recipe may change. Some products you really have to buy, while others you can easily make yourself. Fortunately, the tax authorities also pay part of the extra costs in the form of an extra deduction for dietary costs of 1,300 (2012). However, the doctor must complete a dietary declaration for this.The result of the diet is that the patient often has a lot less abdominal pain. And despite the difficult things that one will encounter, the change will be worth it.