The GF Traveller
Gluten Free Questions ????
Can you always tell if you eat gluten?
Feb
18
Is everything you're eating as clear as this?
I often hear from people about how terrible they feel after they accidentally eat gluten and it’s got me wondering why personally I rarely feel this way… (more…)
Starbucks – Not suitable for Coeliacs?
May
11
Today I popped into Starbucks at lunchtime and was happy to find they sold 2 gluten free cakes, valencia orange cake and a chocolate fudge brownie. Both looked pretty tasty and were separated from non gluten free cakes by small dividers. I was pleased to see this but after a closer look, I was surprised to discover that on the label next to these cakes it now not only said ‘gluten free’ and ‘wheat free’ as I had seen before but also said ‘not suitable for coeliacs’.
Why would Starbucks make a cake that was both ‘wheat free’ and ‘gluten free’ but that is ‘not suitable for coeliacs?’ (more…)
Horrific Stomach Pains
Apr
29
Around 3 months ago I began to experience very bad, spasming pains in my stomach. I knew that the pains weren’t related to eating gluten because they were occuring on random days when I had eaten nothing but my usual breakfast and lunch which I knew did not contain any gluten. For months after being diagnosed I had been eating these same foods and suddenly they were causing me severe pains…Was it really the food or was it something more sinister? It was impossible for me to tell!
At first the pains appeared on a weekly basis which was horrible but it was when they started to come much more frequently (at one point I was in pain 4 of 5 days) that it became unbearable and I decided to go to my doctor. Unfortunately, but not too surprisingly, he said that it was difficult to pinpoint what was causing these pains and gave me a prescription for Mebeverine. He said to try these pills whenever the pains come and if they don’t work then to come back so that we can look into the problem further. Mebeverine is generally used for sufferers of ‘IBS or similar stomach problems’ but I thought I may as well give it a try. The pains, when they sneak up on me, are so painful that I can barely function properly and I didn’t know how much more of them I could take! It was affecting my work, my running and my sleep!
The next time the pains came I took the pills. They didn’t work immediately but the pain eased within an hour or so and was gone a couple of hours later. I would continue to take the pills for a couple of days to ensure the pains were gone. This worked as far as getting rid of that particular wave of spasms but the pains would always come back, resulting in the need for more pills.
The last time I had these pains was 2 weeks ago. I had just eaten my breakfast of gluten free cornflakes with soy milk and a banana a hour earlier and this made something click in my brain. I thought back to the last few times I had the pains and to what I’d eaten….I couldn’t rememeber every time but I could definitely remember eating bananas on at least 2 or 3 other occasions before the pains came…could bananas really be the culprit?
I still can’t be sure if I’m right because it’s only been 2 weeks but I haven’t eaten a banana since and this is the longest I’ve gone in months without pain. I googled stomach pains after eating bananas and came across an interesting article on banana allergy
The fruity culprit?
Ice Cream, Gluten Free?
Mar
03
Is Ice Cream gluten free?
I know that milk, creme, sugar and fruit are gluten free and these (I think) are normally the ingredients of ice cream so does this mean that all ice cream (other than flavours like cookie dough and cookies and cream obviously) are gluten free?
What glutenous ingredients could ice cream be hiding?
I love nibbling on delicious creamy ice cream when I’m travelling to a hot country but since being diagnosed as Coeliac I’ve been avoiding doing this 
Does anyone have any tips on how to choose safe ice cream or can it never be safe if I can’t read the ingredients?
Have I been glutenated?
Feb
11
Since starting my gluten free diet last August I haven’t really felt as though I’ve made many mistakes as I’ve been feeling so much better. This week however, I’ve been feeling lethargic and irritable and my visits to the toilet remind me of how things were before I was diagnosed
I’ve been having these symptoms for 5 days now but other than this I’m feeling fine and all of the other horrible symptoms like being bloated are nowhere to be seen. This leaves me wondering whether or not I have been glutenated! Does anyone have advice on how I might be feeling if I did eat gluten by mistake? Can having only 1 or 2 symptoms suggest glutenation? Also, I’m being so careful that I’m almost certain I haven’t eaten anything unsafe! Could dried dates from Holland and Barrattt really contain gluten? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!
Glucose syrup??
Nov
11
My colleagues are always bringing in snacks for the lunch table at work but generally these are cakes, biscuits and chocolates that I’m not allowed. Today I went to make myself a cup of tea and noticed some tasty looking dates..great, I thought, finally something I can nibble! Off course I looked at the ingredients first (a coeliac can never be too careful!) and they consisted of ’dates, glucose syrup and preservative E202′
Dates: I know these are safe
Preservative E202: This is the e number for Potassium Sorbate (the potassium salt of sorbate acid) used as a preservative and this is safe. (who knew that one day I’d know things like this?!?)
Glucose Syrup: I thought this was just another word for some form of sugar but I thought I’d google it just to be sure.
Wikipedia says: The more general term glucose syrup is often used synonymously with corn syrup, since the former is most commonly made from corn starch. Technically, glucose syrup is any liquid starch hydrolysate of mono, di, and higher saccharides and can be made from any sources of starch; wheat, rice and potatoes are the most common sources.
Celiac.com says that glucose syrup ‘Can utilize a gluten-containing grain or by-product in the manufacturing process, or as an ingredient’
This suggests glucose syrup normally does not contain gluten as it is most commonly made from corn syrup. However, there is the possibility that it could be made from wheat starch which does contain gluten…seriously? How am I to know whether a product containg glucose syrup contains gluten or not?
Prepacked Sushi
Oct
16
One of my favourite lunchtime snacks is prepacked Sushi, which I normally buy from Tesco, Asda or Sainsburys. It’s also something I normally buy to take with me when I travel. I know that generally Sushi is natually gluten free, especially Nigiri which is simply raw fish and rice, but can I be sure that all of the ingredients that make up these prepacked sushi snacks are gluten free? The ingredients label on the back of all of these packs does say that it contains gluten and wheat but since they all contain a bottle of soy sauce and I know this contains gluten could this mean that the sushi itself does not contain gluten or wheat? Since being diagnosed I still eat most prepacked sushi unless the rolls contain something like sweet chilli sauce which is likely to contain gluten. Most of the packs actually lay out the ingredients of each individual sushi roll so I can see what is in each one. Although I cannot be 100% sure that none of these ingredients contain gluten, it looks as though the sushi itself is normally gluten free. I have never felt sick after eating them so can I assume that by throwing away the soy sauce and just eating the sushi itself I am safe? If anyone has insight into my sushi uncertainties then please let me know….
Gluten Free Pic n Mix
Oct
16
Delicious pic n mix is my favourite treat, especially when I’m watching a movie at the cinema but I’m not sure whether or not I can have it anymore. A lot of pic n mix retailers don’t display the ingredients of each sweet so it’s hard to tell which sweets are gluten free and which aren’t. I know that things like licorice and many of the chocolate mice, pigs, etc do contain gluten and I know that sweets like foam bananas and shrimps (mmm!) don’t but what about the rest? I’ve found that Candy King pic n mix, which used to be in Woolies (oh how I miss that!) and is now in many cinemas and some WH Smith’s and supermarkets does provide a list of the ingredients in each sweet and says when they contain gluten. Does this mean that it’s alright to fill up my bag with the sweets that don’t say they contain gluten? Do the sweets that don’t say they contain gluten definitely not contain gluten? Is the threat of contamination from the glutenated sweets a threat to my bag of apparently ‘gluten free pic n mix’ as a result of people scoop sharing? I’d love to know what you think because I really miss my pic n mix!!
UPDATE: I have decided to stay away from regular pic n mix in case of contamination but I found that Marks and Spencer do a type of pic n mix where they have 80 gram bags of sweets seperately packaged and you can pic n mix 3 of these for £1. M&S is pretty good with their labelling and some of the sweets say that they contain gluten and wheat so I of course stay clear of these. I found that they do foam shrimps and bananas and I was happy to find that there was no mention of gluten on these bags. (Perhaps stupidly) I thought these must be safe and on reading the ingredients I couldn’t imagine them being glutified. I nibbled a few foamy delights here and there over the period of a week and I felt fine but still decided I wanted to be certain about their gluten free status. I found a link on the M&S website to lists of the gluten free foods they sell. I couldn’t find my sweets on this list so decided to check the ‘suitable for vegetarians’ list. If my sweets still weren’t on this, I thought, then perhaps it was just because they are too new a product that they haven’t updated their lists yet. Sadly, my foamy delights were on the vegetarian list so this suggests to me that these sweets are not gluten free. This leaves me wondering however why some of the bags of sweets would be labelled as containing gluten and other wouldn’t if they were still unsafe?
EXCITING UPDATE: I recently came across A quarter of.co.uk, a fantastic website which has made me extremely happy! It’s like an online pic n mix where you choose the sweets that you want and they mail them to you. What’s even more brilliant about this site is that they have a gluten free search button which will bring up everything they offer which is gluten free! My bananas and shrimps are on it so I think I’m going to have to treat myself to an early Christmas present 