Cutting out gluten and dairy - how!?

August 4, 2005 1:08 PM

On the advice of my doctor I'm going to try to go gluten- AND dairy-free for two weeks. This is the first time I've ever tried to cut anything out of my diet. What the hell can I still eat? Is beer OK? Please help me keep from wasting away...
posted by gottabefunky to food & drink (26 comments total)

Yum

That site lets you search by what you don't want to eat.
posted by 517 at 1:18 PM on August 4, 2005

Some beers have wheat malt in them (e.g. weizen beers) so you might want to avoid those. My cousin is dairy-free and the hard part is whey. It's in practically everything that's prepackaged or processed. Assuming you don't want to try a fish, vegetables, fruit, and brown rice diet for a couple weeks then any large grocery store, especially some place like Whole Foods is going to have wheat and dairy free sections. You can try soy or tofu ice cream and spelt pasta. Fun!

(Actually those are all pretty good.)
posted by sevenless at 1:22 PM on August 4, 2005

Beer is a definite no, gluten-wise - hard cider is the nearest substitute.

Try Celiac.com for all things gluten-related.
posted by skyscraper at 1:28 PM on August 4, 2005

I'm pretty sure almost all beer is out of the picture for you, for gluten free. You're going to basically be eating a Paleolithic Diet, that is, vegetables and meat. This is what our ancient ancestors ate, before farming ever existed, and it's what our bodies are truly designed to run on. Good luck, it will probably do good things for you if you can pull it off!
posted by knave at 1:29 PM on August 4, 2005

I've been dairy-free (out of necessity, not choice) for 11 years now. Mainly it consists of checking the package on each and every single thing I buy, since the most unlikely items often have various dairy products in them.

Soy cheese made that pretty easy, and the few times I have dairy products accidently I can tell immediately by taste, even trace amounts. I don't really miss anything from my dairy-ingesting days, with the possible exception of chocolate-dipped soft ice cream.
posted by Kickstart70 at 1:35 PM on August 4, 2005

Asian food - Thai, Japanese, Chinese - is largely dairy-free and can be gluten-free. A lot of Indian food, as well. Pretty do-able for 2 weeks.
posted by theora55 at 1:39 PM on August 4, 2005

Whole Foods has a gluten-free section. There are replacements for flour, and some sell frozen gluten-free bread, pizza crust and bagels. You'll find the texture is quite different.

Stay away from beer. Watch out for flavor additives, which can contain malt, whey, or wheat gluten.

You'll find rice becomes a big staple in a gluten-free diet. Learn your rice dishes!
posted by Rothko at 1:57 PM on August 4, 2005

The quinoa-based product linked by 517 reminds me that I recently tried it for the first time in the form of a quinoa black bean burger. I second that yum, and you may be able to find pasta made with quinoa in a grocery's gluten-free section.
posted by PY at 2:37 PM on August 4, 2005

Trader Joe's has a bunch of gluten-free things as well.
posted by SisterHavana at 2:40 PM on August 4, 2005

Trader Joe's has a bunch of gluten-free things as well.

Mostly cheese, frozen and fresh vegetables, frozen fish, dairy-based desserts, and curry sauce. Nearly everything else has something gluteny in it.
posted by Rothko at 3:15 PM on August 4, 2005

Rice, grains, corn. Get out there and find out how many foods there actually are without the standard western milk & flour.

But rice is your friend. (Basmati can be as quick to cook as pasta.) Curries, stir-frys with any twist - Thai, Chinese, Japanese etc. Rice & buckwheat noodles. There are a lot of different grains out there.

Hell, you can still eat corn flakes & rice krispies.

I avoid cow dairy using goat or sheep milk for my one cup of coffee a day & occasional butter use (mushrooms sauteed in goat milk butter is the best) but you'll have to check if you can use them as a sub. If you can then theres a quite a few cheeses you could have. I hate soya milk but I have rice milk on my cereal (a mix of corn flakes, rice krispies, puffed millet & dried fruit) in the morning...too thin for coffee but tastes good.

Find your local wholefood co-op. Trader Joe's is OK in a push but you should have some decent local place near you.

See this as a way of experimenting with what you eat rather than denying yourself something. Oh, and cocktails. You getter a better alcohol high with stronger spirits ;-)
posted by i_cola at 3:16 PM on August 4, 2005

Hell, you can still eat corn flakes & rice krispies.

These often contain malt, usually a no-no.
posted by Rothko at 3:21 PM on August 4, 2005

If you eat asian, be sure to ask for wheat-free soy sauce. Yep it has wheat in it, but most all places should have the alternative since so many people have allergies.

I commend you on your efforts; my brother stopped eating dairy and wheat, and all his allergies have gone away.
posted by scazza at 3:23 PM on August 4, 2005

You can still eat out easily at Mexican restaurants. Corn tortillas instead of flour, hold the sour cream and cheese.
posted by Juliet Banana at 3:27 PM on August 4, 2005

Ditto what others have said re: Asian foods (but hold the soy) and Mexican food. If you get stuck in an Italian restaurant, the worst place ever for a Wheatard, get an unbreaded chicken dish and try hard not to look at the pasta or pizza. (Rice pasta is perfectly fine, though, but most places don't have it.)

I was diagnosed gluten-intolerant/celiac while in college, and thus had to give up my college kid's diet of pizza, cookies, and beer. I substituted Chinese food, ice cream, and vodka. YMMV.
posted by Asparagirl at 5:12 PM on August 4, 2005

BTW, I don't know the specifics of your medical situation, but gluten intolerance/celiac disease can cause pseudo-lactose intolerance. That is, you're not really lactose intolerant, but since your interstines are getting shredded by the gliadin (the noxious protein in the gluten), your body takes on some of the more, er, flatulent characteristics of a lactose intolerant person, even though you may have the lactase enzyme working just fine.

A celiac person who sticks to the gluten-free diet should have no problem with dairy products again once his/her innards repair themselves from the gluten damage. Usually takes a few weeks to a few months. A celiac person who has been cheating on the diet (as I sometimes do) will be able to chart how much damage they've been doing recently by how quickly the psuedo-lactose intolerance crops up.
posted by Asparagirl at 5:19 PM on August 4, 2005

er, intestines, not "interstines"
posted by Asparagirl at 5:20 PM on August 4, 2005

I did the paleolithic diet for more than a year and only recently have added some rice-quinoa pasta back to my diet. I found it was best not to do a lot of substituting but to think of changing things outright. Sticking to meat, fish, veg, fruit and nuts leaves a lot of leeway and this kind of eating, if done right, will not only take care of any gluten or lactose intolerance, but totally axe that afternoon grogginess that hits people who eat a lot of starch.

After awhile you will find that anything made of flour just tastes like glue to you, and no pastry or candy on earth is as satisfying as a piece of ripe fruit. I've never felt as healthy in my life.
posted by zadcat at 6:29 PM on August 4, 2005

Chocolate Silk. mmmmmmm
posted by Thorzdad at 8:00 PM on August 4, 2005

Soy and/or rice milk and ice "cream" probably won't taste very good to you until you've been off dairy for a while, since you'll compare the taste mentally to actual milk products and it _just isn't the same_.

Hints for cooking: Don't try to cook with rice milk. Cook with soy milk.

For raw drinking (on cereal, in beverages), though, soy milk is not good for me; I can't digest it well, and I'm not sure whether it's because the soy needs to be cooked, but I tend to avoid raw soy products.

Be warned that many "corn" tortillas contain wheat; I suspect that the gluten helps them hold together better.

When I'm strictly avoiding dairy, I find myself eating a lot of olives; I think it's for the fat (I'm a vegetarian, so avoiding dairy cuts out a lot of fat from my diet).
posted by amtho at 8:37 PM on August 4, 2005

Another non-bread food that's filling: nuts and sunflower seeds.
posted by amtho at 8:39 PM on August 4, 2005

I triple recomend the Asian stuff, and I usually recomend lentil and vegetable soup (water, pepper, lentils, soups, fresh herbs, whatever veggies you've got in the fridge, big stock pot, and a couple of hours of heat) in these gluten free threads.
posted by sleslie at 9:39 PM on August 4, 2005

My wife has a wheat/gluten intolerance and here's some of my tips.

Find a "natural" grocery store around you, such as Whole Foods. Shopping in the gluten-free section can get you used to what to look out for.

BE CAREFUL WITH ASIAN FOOD. Almost all soy sauce contains wheat. So no soy sauce and no sauces with soy sauce in them (duh). Thai food rarely contains soy sauce, but most of it does contain coconut milk. Not sure if that would hit your dairy restriction, tho.

Indian food will become your friend. Indian food has TONS of good dishes that are based on beans and meats with no gluten. Stay away from the nan, roti, pakoras, samosas, and other baked goods. I forget the name, but there are large things that are like tortilla chips made from chickpea flour and those are safe. They're usually served at the beginning of the meal with mint chutney and some kind of salsa.

See if you're allergic to spelt. At whole foods, in the freezer section is a line of breads from a Spelt bakery in Ohio. Unlike other cake-like gluten free breads, these breads taste just like real bread. Technically, spelt flour contains gluten, but most wheat intolerants do not have a reaction to spelt.

The good news is that you can buy bulk spelt flour under the brand name VitaSpelt (bright red bag) that works EXACTLY like regular flour. You can make all the yummy cakes and breads you want at home.

Mexican food can work in a pinch, but be careful of cheese. Real mexican places use corn chips, but larger chain restaurants usually use wheat "tortilla" chips.
posted by Sasquatch at 6:15 AM on August 5, 2005

Sasquatch, those chips are called Papadum.
posted by By The Grace of God at 6:55 AM on August 5, 2005

I've been doing this over the summer as well. One thing I did was to go through my cookbooks (actually, this is an ongoing project) and write down the page numbers and titles of recipes that were wheat and dairy free. That way when I'm struggling to come up with something, I have an index of where my good recipes are.

If you end up doing this long-term, I think you will find that changing your food is more effective than food substitutes for the most part. Food substitutes can leave you feeling deprived, like what you are eating isn't as good as the real thing. OTH, there are some great substitutes that are worth trying out (mmmm... rice flour-hazelnut wafer cookies).

Blending a frozen banana with other fruit and possibly a little soy or rice milk makes an excellent approximation of ice-cream.

Given that you are cutting out some major sources of calories and fats, big handfuls of (raw unsalted) nuts are perfectly acceptable. I mix pecans, pinenuts, almonds, and fresh or dried fruit in apple sauce and have it with peanut-butter rice cakes for lunch. You can put nuts on salad and in rice as well.

You can make left-over rice into porridge by adding more water and some dried fruit and heating slowly. When it is very thick and sticky, serve it with maple syrup. This works best with brown rice.

Polenta can easily be made dairy free by simply omitting the cheese and replacing the milk with water or broth from any standard recipe. You can fry it and have it with eggs, you can put pasta sauce on it, you can barbecue it. You can stir tasty bits in to match your meals (mushrooms, peppers) It's a wonderful things for the gluten/dairy free diet.

Tamari soy sauce is wheat-free and, in my opinion, much tastier. If you go out for sushi or something, you can bring your own bottle and the restaurant won't usually mind.
posted by carmen at 8:37 AM on August 5, 2005

You could try dhosa - indian pancakes:

Mix equal amounts rice flour and gram flour (chick-pea flour) or urad flour (lentil flour).
Whisk in enough water to give it the consistency of single cream.
Add a bit of salt.
(4oz of each flour, 1/4tsp salt and 1.25 pints water is what my recipe calls for, and that makes about 6 big thick pancakes)

Heat a heavy frying pan with a dollop of vegetable oil, ladle in some batter, cover til it comes away from the pan. Turn to cook the other side. Serve either stuffed with curry or with pretty much anything else - they're not bland, but they work OK with both sweet and savoury.

posted by handee at 9:07 AM on August 5, 2005