Looking an Advice for a Diet

There are a lot of great products out there. My daughter is allergic to soy, milk, and eggs, and if we can do it you can too. I try not to eat something she can have in front of her. Wait until nap and give the other kids a treat. Or if you don't want to do that, slowly start making things and they will not notice. I eat a lot of what she can have, and its not that bad. The animal crackers are a bit to get use to. Good luck.

Gluten free is not all that hard, and I would put the whole family on the restricted diet. The others can have the gluten foods when they are out or with friends. You can buy gluten free bread, cake mixes, pasta, cookies, etc. in the grocery store. The only "caution" I have is on the gluten free pasta - if you over cook it, it comes out like paste. The choices today are so much better than they were 14 years ago when DH started a gluten free (yeast free, dairy free, sugar free) diet, and I had to go to specialty health food stores (neither of them close by) to get gluten free foods.

My son is gluten and dairy free, and has been for 6 years. There are tons of good things out there. The rest of our house isn't gluten free, but we do use a separate toaster oven for his toast/bagels, heating stuff up, etc. As other people have suggested, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods have good stuff, including Wellshire Farms gluten free dino shaped chicken nuggets! There's also a brand of pre-made desserts called Shabtai, which you can find in Kosher markets or the Kosher section of the supermarket. Rainbow cookies, brownie bites, and "ring tings" which are just like the Hostess kind. There are also a few places for mail order. For bread/bagels/doughnuts/muffins there's a place called Kinnikinnick in Canada that specializes in baking for celiacs. www.kinnikinnick.com. There's also a place called Allergy grocer that sells mixes, cookies, snacks, you name it! www.allergygrocer.com. And , for cake mixes and really good gluten free pancake mixes, try the Really Great Foods Company, www.reallygreatfoods.com. The mixes are all very easy to make, and taste really good. I make them for parties and school functions all the time, and people are shocked to find out it's gluten free.

Good luck!!!

Hi D.,

I also have a four year old with celiac - and multiple allergies. I started out attempting to only feed him the gluten free diet. It didn't work really well - and it made my life rather difficult. In case you haven't checked yet - gluten is basically hiding in everything packaged. And, it was horrible for him - to not be able to have what his brother had - but now he has accepted it - and will ask if there is gluten in a product. Not only that but depending on her sensitivity level - cross contamination from the same pan or toaster could cause her problems.

So, I took the whole house basically gluten and allergen free. At first it was rather hard - and I spent a fortune on not so good gluten free products - but we figured it out. We also discovered through this process that my DH shared my son's celiac - and he felt so much better once we did the family lifestyle change. I depend on lower cost gluten free products from Trader Joes - and Amazon has some good deals on gluten free products in bulk. It ended up a lot easier for us to have everyone do it. I'm not saying I don't bring my nonceliac kid to the pizza place for a treat now and again - but at home and with his brother - he is gluten free - and it is so much easier.

If you go to a health food store you will find lots of items. You need to tell your child it will give her a "Very Bad boo boo" Give her a chart every time she eats a food of her and doesn't complain or tries a new kind give her a sticker. Then after 20 stickers on the chart take her to the park/library or other fun thing for a reward. My daughter also has allergies and it took some time but now at 10 she doesn't even ask if she can have it. We have know since about 5. They have Trader Joe's health food stores in Lake Grove also in Rocky point business district they have a health food store. You can also eat the food with her so she doesn't feel alone. Teach her that it is for the safety of her health. This way she knows mommy is not just being mean.
good luck :)

Here's a great website to get you started: http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/
There are a lot of resources available on the web and loads of people who can help you out.

Good luck,
M

My husband has celiac, and I know the challenges of a gluten free diet. Trader Joe's is a great resource, as is Whole Foods- they both have lots of gluten free staples. (My husband swears by the Whole Foods bread, as long as it's toasted.) There's a support group out of Phelp's hospital that might be helpful to you, they offer a new patient orientation- it's called the Westchester Celiac Sprue Support Group. Check out the Gluten Intolerance Group website for restaurants that the whole family can enjoy. It's a tough adjustment, but it gets easier, I promise! Good luck!

The book "Special Diets for Special Kids" is a great resource to check out. Lots of recipes that all the kids will like.

I would suggest that the whole house be gluten free. I know the other kids won't like it very much, but it's only fair that everyone be on the same diet. Just my opinion!
Lynsey

Everybody eats gluten free until the four year old is
old enought to understand. Good luck.

I Know this response is late, but I never have time to check my email at home after work and my email account is blocked at work so I can't look at work either. Anyway, I had to respond to your question. I am allergic to dairy and chocolate(and a few other things like preservatives in foods processed foods and so on) and have been since I was 16 years old. When we found out about the allergy, my mom tossed everything in the house that I could possibly be allergic to. The entire family was placed on an organic diet so that mom only had to cook 1 meal. An example, she would make a pot of sauce with macaroni and leave any cheese out of everything. She would put it on the side if my dad and sistr wanted, but nothing went into the sauce that I could get sick from. I was 16 and still my mom did this for me to make sure I was healthy. I knew better than to eat any dairy or chocolate because I was much older than your little girl. You can see where I am going with this. Your entire family will need to eat like your daughter until she is old enough to understand what her disease can do to her. It is an inconvenience for you, but she will be healthy and what more is there. Your other children will adjust to the change especially if they are around the same age as she. Hope this helps!!

A friend of mine has a child with celiac disease, and I know she gets a lot of food from Trader Joe's. I think she pretty much tries to keep the whole family on a gluten-free diet most of the time to make it easier for the little one. Good luck.

Hi D.,

A friend of mine has a website for all kinds of health products and I just checked for celiac disease. She has a few books with info about the disease and a kids recipe book. I would think that with the recipes you can make similar things for all your children and she won't know she is getting anything "different". I did look up the disease too and with some tweeking you may be able to make some of the same things for her that your other kids will eat too (buckwheat pancakes - my son loves them and they are healthy for all of you). Check the health food stores too. Good luck and here is the website:

http://www.marketamerica.com/claudinep/

Dear D.,

My aunt has celiac's disease, and at one point they thought I did as well. It is truly a challenge to find good tasting food that is Gluten Free, however I have found that Trader Joe's has a wide variety of Gluten Free foods. They have certain pastas, breads, snacks, pancakes, etc. Maybe you should just have the whole family on occasion eat the same as her so she doesn't feel so left out. It really is not so bad and it may help her to accept that she has to eat differently then her friends. Good luck!!

You need to find a good natural foods or health foods store that carries flour other than wheat, like Rice Flour for instance. A friend of mine recently discovered she has this as well and she has come up with some really creative dishes for herself using all kinds of different flour types.

If you do a search online I am sure you could find all sorts of recipes and support from others with the disease. Good Luck - I know it tough!

My experience is limited, but we do try to limit gluten and wheat because my husband's family has a lot of food allergies. Plus, some people believe that wheat is not that good for us anyway and can cause problems for people who aren't really allergic to it.

How severe is the allergy? Is it just the gluten or is it any wheat? Does she have problems with other gluten grains? For instance, can she have spelt? I think you have to do a bit of experimenting to see what causes her problems.

I think there are a lot of gluten and/or wheat free products that your whole family can eat. Maybe not all the time, but in some cases. For example:

There are pastas made from other ingredients (e.g., rice) so you can make spaghetti that everyone could eat. Sometimes the textures are different and might take some getting use to.

There are baking mixes. I have made cupcakes that were actually good. I served them at my son's bday party without making any announcements about it and people liked them.

Your whole family can eat rice. Rice itself is gluten free, but some people think the enrichment process adds gluten. Here's an article about that
http://gfkitchen.server101.com/rice.htm

Luckily there is quite a bit of info about this disease out there. Invest in a good cookbook. www.mothering.com has some info.

Good luck.

Talk to a nutritionist and read labels. Things hav gluten that you would never imagine. There are now many items that are labeled gluten free from pasta to cookies. Even though no one else has the problem you are all going to have to adjust for the 4yo sake. She is not quit old enough yet to understand that she can't have these things and her siblings can without having hurt feelings. My oldest daughter had to avoid certain foods for behavioral issues and I had to teach her that even though others are having them she needs to make good choices when I'm not there to make them for her. Do your reserch, get a nutritionalist and you may find it has health benifits for the whole family. A.