Ms. A's Blog

Do you want to feel better faster?  Do NOT eat out for the next few months or until all your symptoms have resolved.  Eating out and not mastering the gluten free diet (e.g. reading labels) are the main reasons celiacs tend to take a year or longer to  heal or bring down their antibodies.  Each gluten exposure you have will trigger the immune response triggering your celiac disease to flare up until your body decides to calm down (weeks or months).  In theory, the GI tract can heal fast, but not when you keep activating your celiac disease. 

You can do it.  You are on your way!  You just might get there faster if you do not eat out.  

Hmm.  Did the Japanese steak house have a gluten-free menu?  Do they cook their gluten-free steaks on a cleaned surface or the same surface as gluteny foods?  How about the spices they put on the food?  Are they gluten-free also?

Another worthwhile question, do they even know what gluten is?  Any wheat, rye or barley or derivative such as malt?  Do they marinate their steaks in a gluteny mixture?

All these are good reasons not to eat out when starting the gluten-free diet.

One thing I was most surprised by was that a lot of pepper has gluten in it.

It's possible, but would be very unusual. Do you have any brand examples? Most pepper is naturally gluten-free, and would only have gluten if it were mixed in to prevent clumping or something, but I've not heard of this with pepper.

Pepper doesn’t have gluten.  But this is a “blog” , usually, the poster doesn’t want a lot of “advice” or comments.  If they wanted that, they would post in the forum.  So don’t be upset that she doesn’t respond.  

On 9/10/2018 at 9:49 PM, GFinDC said:

Hmm.  Did the Japanese steak house have a gluten-free menu?  Do they cook their gluten-free steaks on a cleaned surface or the same surface as gluteny foods?  How about the spices they put on the food?  Are they gluten-free also?

Another worthwhile question, do they even know what gluten is?  Any wheat, rye or barley or derivative such as malt?  Do they marinate their steaks in a gluteny mixture?

All these are good reasons not to eat out when starting the gluten-free diet.

The restaurant did not have a gluten-free menu. I am quickly realizing that having to educate others on what gluten is and what cross-contamination is are both not worth eating out. However, I have found the "Find Me gluten-free" app that has worked great on the few occasions when I was in a situation that I needed to eat out.