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Hello.
 
>Anyway, I am completely frustrated about all of this.  What do I take
>when I have headaches or some other pain?  I feel like I must go pick
>the food off the trees for it to be completely safe.  Lots of
 
Tell me about it!  So many of the gluten free foods bother my wife, that we
suspect that lots of the packaging must be kept from "sticking together"
using wheat flour, or something else with gluten in it.  Consequently,
we make almost EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING.  Fruits and
veg that you peel are okay, because the skin is removed prior to eating.
Things like butter _should_ be okay because the paper is waxed (but
you won't get me to swear to that).
 
My wife refers to herself as a canary - you know, the ones that were
taken into mines because they are very sensitive to gas.  And she's
right - how long will it take for the rest of society to wake up to
the fact that they are being poisoned; if not by gluten, but by lots
of other stuff?
 
>true, then how can we be sure that Coke is really gluten-free (a recent
 
You cannot.  My pharmacist assured my wife that a particular medicine
was gluten free - after all, there was no sugar in it.  It took us a little
while before we realized that he meant GLUCOSE, not GLUTEN.  And this is
a person with a LOT of college education, working in a field where
chemistry is a big part of his job.  What you must do is this:  if you
really want to eat a product that you think is gluten free, try it.  If it
makes you ill, you cannot eat it.  (Mind you, if you're recently off gluten
you can get sick from things like heavily spiced foods and such, even
though they don't have gluten, simply because your body is healing from
the damage caused by ingesting gluten and it is in a precarious state.
 
>I read Against the Grain, which was very helpful, but I still don't
>believe that I will ever be able to eat at a restaurant again.
 
This is something else that we have decided.  On the other hand, the food
we prepare at home is healthier, and orders of magnitude cheaper than
eating in a restaurant, so is it that big of a deal?  (Yes, i know, there
are days I don't want to cook and wash dishes either - and I'm the one who
does them in my marriage).
 
Nathan
 ==============================================================================
Nathan D. Justus                        AT&T Bell Labs, W. Long Branch, NJ,USA
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