Well, it has been a fair amount of time since my last blog post, and I will tell you, I have been a busy lady! My best gal pal's wedding is a pleasant memory, and we have moved into the possibly even more hectic month of April. This month I have a kitchen lab on Saturdays, and I am taking a nutrition lecture class on Sundays. I'm really excited to be in the nutrition class, especially today.
This morning as I was scrolling down my Facebook feed, I happened to run across a fellow gluten free blogger who was asked what a reader might do for her vegetarian, Celiac daughter. We literally had a lecture on this in my class yesterday, so I was really excited to jump in and offer a helpful suggestion! "Amaranth!" I said, "It's an ancient, gluten free grain, and a complete protein on its own!" There are actually three such grains, they are amaranth, buckwheat, and quinoa, but I only mentioned the amaranth. Well, not even two seconds after I posted my information an Internet troll decided to jump on my post and tell me that I was wrong, and that amaranth is "laden with gluten."
Being human, and knowing the potential for my hearing something incorrectly, I was immediately worried that perhaps I had given some false information and maybe I had misunderstood something in class yesterday. Well, I hopped on the old search engine, and typed the question, "Is amaranth gluten free." The very first post was one about how great amaranth is, especially for people intolerant to gluten, for the exact reasons I mentioned! So, I did what came naturally, and I immediately shared the page with the person who called me out.
Then I gave it some time, and thought that maybe this person might just be coming from somewhere knowledgeable too. So I did a little digging and found out that she is a fan of several of the same gluten free sites that I am. One of the sites is from a gluten free researcher who I have heard mixed reviews about, I won't say exactly who. What I'm getting at, is that this researcher is one who I think has some amazing things to say, and I've learned a ton about being gluten free from the site! But there are also a few statements that are questionable, or perhaps too extreme.
This got me thinking. After over a year of being gluten free, I have had the pleasure of experiencing the good, the bad, and the ugly of being gluten free, and not one single doctor, researcher, or blogger has gotten it right for my exact gluten intolerance. However, they have all hit a few points that were exactly the information that I needed to hear!
What does that mean for the gluten free community? I think that it means that we all have to take our own health into our own hands, and become our own researchers and advocates! I know just how damaging gluten can be, and I know that we all need to KNOW what we can and cannot digest or tolerate, but I also know that all of us are different! We each have our own individual makeup that will affect how we can process certain foods differently from everyone else.
So what's the answer? We can't all just blindly follow every one's advice, but we can't go around poisoning ourselves to see if one food is safer than another either. Maybe I don't even have an answer for you. I know that isn't much help, and I started this blog to hopefully help even just one person, but as an individual, I can't tell someone else what will make them feel better or worse. I can make an educated guess from my own experiences, but I can't say for certain how someone else will react to a specific trigger. Heck, some days I can't even tell you what I will be reacting to. That's just one of the things about food allergies and intolerance, especially with our Western diets that consist largely of processed foods. There are frequently ingredients that are hidden in foods, and companies are not yet being held accountable to be totally transparent about this fact.
Perhaps the best piece of advice I can offer, if you are having issues with your health, and you think that gluten, dairy, soy, processed foods, etc. are the culprit, keep a food journal. Track every little morsel you put in your mouth, but don't limit the journal to just the foods that you eat. Track how you felt before and after eating, both how you feel on the health side of things, and your mood. Write down every little stomachache, headache and episode of unexplained hives, rashes, or other weird skin reaction you might have. Keep a record for a week, keep it up longer if you can, and pay attention! How do you feel after eating or drinking anything? Become your own advocate! We can and should all support each other, and we can all say what worked best for us, but every individual will be just a little different than you, maybe even a lot different than you. Instead of attacking each other on other peoples' blogs, let's try to build each other up! I know we're all trying to help each other, and we all think we know best, and maybe we do know what is best for ourselves, but that doesn't mean that it is the sure fire best for everyone else too. Give people a chance. Give them a chance to either find out by doing their own research, or wait for them to ask for your opinion. We are all in this together, but that doesn't mean that we are all have the same experiences. Live well, and good luck taking your health into knowledgeable hands!!
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