Gluten Free Food Preparation

Let's take a minute and explore this a little more.

The first thing that we should talk about is the gluten reaction itself. Celiac disease is not an allergy. It is an autoimmune reaction. Your immune system protects your body against harmful invaders. Normally these invaders would be things like bacteria, viruses, parasites and toxins. When the immune system goes awry, it can attack the body itself. This process of the immune system attacking the body is called an autoimmune reaction.

In the case of someone with celiac disease, in the presence of gluten the immune system attacks and destroys the lining of the small intestine. The lining of the small intestine is where the nutrients from the food you eat are absorbed. This causes malnutrition as well as many other digestive symptoms.

Researchers don't yet know for certain what causes the many celiac symptoms that aren't digestive in nature. Some believe that it's the lack of absorbed nutrients from the intestine that eventually cause symptoms in other areas of the body. Others believe that the autoimmune reaction may not solely be occurring in the intestine, but may be directly attacking other body systems.

Just like your immune system begins fighting off viruses and bacteria as soon as they are detected, your immune system will begin fighting off gluten as soon as it is detected. Researchers are working to determine at what level the immune system will detect gluten, but the levels are on the order of 20-40 parts per million.

This is why the amount of gluten that someone with celiac can tolerate is so small as to be nearly imperceptible. This is further complicated by the fact that gluten itself is sticky. Remember making paste as a child by combining flour and water? Well, it's the gluten itself that causes that paste to be sticky.

The inherent stickiness of gluten combined with the extremely low level at which gluten is detected by the immune system of someone with celiac disease or gluten intolerance is the reason why you must replace certain items and they must be designated for preparation of gluten-free foods only.

Nonstick pans are very easily scratched, and even the tiny scratches that develop on nonstick pans are deep enough to hold gluten. The grain of wood contains grooves that will hold the gluten in the same manner. The insides of slotted toasters cannot be cleaned at all, so there is no way to clean gluten out of a slotted toaster. Scratches on plastic can also hold gluten, although many modern plastics don't scratch as easily as they used to. Anything that may have gluten stuck to or baked onto it, such as baking pans, cookie sheets and cast iron cookware will hold gluten. Things with small holes or crevices, such as strainers and colanders also need to be replaced.

Not everything needs to be replaced though. Gluten might be sticky, but soap and water unsticks it. Soap is a surfactant, which means it helps release things that are stuck from a surface. For example, in many cases a toaster oven's rack can be removed and cleaned thoroughly. If you have uncoated stainless steel cookware, you're in luck. Stainless steel is one of the easiest surfaces to clean of gluten. It can even be used for gluten-containing and gluten-free food as long as it is cleaned thoroughly between uses.

The transition from a gluten-filled diet to a gluten-free one takes some time, planning and patience, but regaining your health, sometimes for the first time in your life, makes it worth the initial inconvenience.