Going gluten free

A few months ago some routine blood work that we had done on Emmett came back showing he may have Celiac disease (intolerance to gluten). He had a biopsy done on his small intestine, which came back negative, but they told us he needs to have the blood test every 6 months because he's still at risk of developing the disease. I've since learned that the biopsies can be unreliable, and some chronic (mild) health problems that James and the boys have may be due to gluten intolerance. So, we've decided to go "gluten free" for 4 weeks (starting tomorrow) to see if anything improves.

Although I'm the only one not suspected of having a problem with gluten, as the family shopper and cook I've now got a whole bunch of extra work to do! Gluten is in almost all baked goods - bread, cake, muffins, etc, as well as in pasta and a lot of pre-prepared foods (bye bye cream of mushroom soup!). You can buy a gluten free version of pretty much everything, although you're paying a premium (a small loaf of gluten free bread runs around $6.50). We'll be buying a few snack type GF products (for in the car/preschool/nursery), but mostly I'll be cooking and baking everything from scratch. Yesterday I went to bulk barn and stocked up on rice flour, potato flour, tapioca flour and potato starch. We've also got xantham gum (makes GF baked goods taste more like the real thing) and rice pastas. Of course, there are tons and tons of foods that are naturally gluten free that we can still eat...we're just going to have to be a lot more careful about things. The thing that really worries me is Em getting upset if he can't eat the same snack as his friends at school, or that he won't understand why he can't get a cookie or muffin from the bakery at the end of a grocery run. I suppose he'll just get used to it.

Now I've got to go pack up all of my flour and pasta and get ready for "G Day" tomorrow. Wish us luck!