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Custom Choice Cereal in USA Today!

Those of you in New York, Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, and Denver — pick up a copy of today’s USA Today and check out our ad in the Celiac Awareness insert! The insert has several articles related to celiac disease, including advice for parents whose children are trying to adjust to a gluten-free diet.

Stuffing, Anyone?

Thanksgiving can be rough for people who can’t tolerate gluten or who are choosing to eat gluten-free food. Traditional recipes for pie crusts, dinner rolls, and stuffing all contain flour or bread that contains gluten. However, there are gluten-free options available, and a recent article in the New York Times included the following recipe for gluten-free stuffing. What are your favorite gluten-free Thanksgiving dishes? Share them with us!

Wild Rice and Brown Rice Stuffing With Apples, Pecans and Cranberries

Like many Thanksgiving dishes, this pilaf combines sweet and savory foods. Apples and cranberries are high in phenolic acids, which are believed to have antioxidant properties.

1 1/2 cups wild rice

3/4 cup short-grain brown rice

6 cups chicken stock, vegetable stock or water

Salt to taste

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 small or medium onion, finely chopped

1 cup diced celery

2 garlic cloves, minced (optional)

1 tablespoon butter

2 apples, cored and cut in 1/2-inch dice

1/3 cup lightly toasted pecans, coarsely chopped

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh sage

1/3 cup dried cranberries

1. Combine the wild rice with 4 1/2 cups stock or water in one saucepan and the brown rice with 1 1/2 cups stock or water in another smaller saucepan. Add salt to taste and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer the brown rice for 35 to 40 minutes, until the rice is tender and all of the liquid has been absorbed. Turn off the heat, place a clean kitchen towel over the pot and return the lid. Let sit for 10 to 15 minutes. Simmer the wild rice for 40 to 50 minutes, until the grains have begun to splay. Drain through a strainer if there is liquid in the pot, and return to the pot. Place a clean kitchen towel over the pot and return the lid. Let sit for 10 to 15 minutes.

2. While the grains are cooking, prepare the remaining ingredients. Heat the oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet and add the onion. Cook, stirring often, until the onion begins to soften, about 3 minutes. Add the celery and a generous pinch of salt, and continue to cook until the onion is completely tender, another 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook, stirring, until it is fragrant, another 30 to 60 seconds. Remove from the heat and transfer to a large bowl. Add the cooked grains and stir together.

3. Return the skillet to the stove and heat over medium-high heat. Add the butter, and when the foam subsides add the apples. Cook, stirring or tossing in the pan, until lightly colored, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and add to the bowl with the grains. Add the remaining ingredients and stir together. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Transfer to a lightly oiled or buttered baking dish and cover with foil.

4. Warm the stuffing in a 325-degree oven for 20 to 30 minutes before serving.

Yield: Makes about 8 cups, serving 12 to 16.

Advance preparation: The cooked grains will keep for 3 days in the refrigerator and can be frozen. The stuffing benefits from being made a day ahead.

Nutritional information per serving (12 servings): 188 calories; 1 gram saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 2 grams monounsaturated fat; 3 milligrams cholesterol; 33 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams dietary fiber; 21 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 4 grams protein.

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

Gluten-Free Dr. Wangen Wednesday

Dr. Stephen WangenToday is not only the first day of a new month (can you believe it’s JUNE already??) but also the first Wednesday of of the month! As some of you already know – and more of you hopefully find out – we at Custom Choice Cereal do our best to make this day also known as Dr. Wangen Wednesday because our friend and advisor Dr. Stephen Wangen answers any question you might have about celiac disease, gluten intolerance and living gluten-free!

Suffering from celiac disease himself, Stephen understands the challenges of a gluten-free diet from both a personal and professional experience. Most importantly, he is very passionate about helping others like you. This passion was a call that he answered by co-founding The IBS Treatment Center in Seattle, WA, blogging as The Gluten Free Doctor, and serving on the Board of Trustees for the Gluten Intolerance Group of North America. We invite you to read more about Stephen and his books in our introduction to our advisors.

Dr. Wangen is going out of his way to provide this wonderful service, and we appreciate your understanding that out of respect for Dr. Wangen and his time we have to limit each session to 5 questions on a first-come, first-served basis. Please join us at Custom Choice Cereal in thanking Stephen for taking the time off his busy schedule to address your questions.

Asking what YOU want to know is easy and can be done in just 4 simple steps:

  1. Post your question as a comment to this blog entry
  2. We send all questions to Dr. Wangen
  3. Dr. Wangen answers and we publish what he says in reply to your comments
  4. Check back for the answer to your question a few days later or simply subscribe to our blog

Don’t be shy – there are no “dumb questions” except for those you don’t ask :-) Besides, we learn a whole lot from what you want to know every month and are curious to see your questions!

Summary Of The Gluten-Free Labeling Summit 2011

Puuuh. Now this was a week of intense travel for me representing Custom Choice Cereal! It all started with the Charlotte Gluten-Free Expo last Saturday, which was truly awesome and great fun.
World's Largest Gluten-Free Cake
This week then continued with the long anticipated Gluten-Free Labeling Summit in Washington, DC, where the world’s largest gluten-free cake was assembled to raise awareness for the lack of clear standards in gluten-free product labeling. The FDA was also there, and I think the mission to make them aware how important food safety is for people who suffer from celiac disease or gluten intolerance was accomplished. We at Custom Choice Cereal are so proud to have donated to this much needed and wonderful event!

It was awesome to see friends from the community such as Jules Shepard, Nancy Ginter from the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness (NFCA), and Tinsley Meloy from Celiebo again. On top of that, I finally also had the chance to meet 1in133.org co-initiator John Forberger, Jill Brack from Glow Gluten Free, Dr. Alessio Fasano from the Maryland University’s Center for Celiac Research, the NFCA’s founder Alice Bast, and many more. Everyone was excited to be there, and watching the cake grow to 11 feet and 2 inches (!!) throughout the day was great fun!

You can watch a video of the cake being built on the Custom Choice Cereal facebook page. And I am just wondering: when was the last time you needed ladders to build a cake?!?

Yesterday, I finished my travel-intense week with a sweet “little” 586 mile trip from DC to Wilmington, NC, to speak to a local celiac disease support group. I always love meeting people in those groups! This one was a particular joy though because it was local for us in North Carolina. Not so local was the 9.5 hour drive DC-Wilmington-Chapel Hill… But at least it was a gorgeous day, and meeting others in the celiac community is what I love most about my job. Hope all of you have a wonderful weekend!

A Little Entrepreneurial Wisdom

John RuskinYesterday was a very interesting day for Custom Choice Cereal. I had the great opportunity to return to UNC – always a pleasure but especially after Harrison Barnes announced his return to the Tar Heels for another year – to listen to and learn from two student teams who analyzed Custom Choice Cereal over the past months.

The previous sentence already included an important piece of valuable information – listen & learn. Quite honestly, there is rarely a day that passes without finding out something that I didn’t know before. I truly believe that this is one of the great benefits of being an entrepreneur. However, it also requires you to be open-minded and receptive to what others have to say – and yes, that isn’t always easy and can even be uncomfortable if they are not saying what you want to hear but what you need to hear.

What really prompted me to share a few of my entrepreneurial “lessons learned” are two things though. First, I am quite honestly a little fed up with people who over-promise and under-deliver. It should be the other way around, folks! At the very least in the long term it will definitely come around and bite you in the rear end because you will develop a reputation for this kind of behavior. It is perfectly acceptable to say “No” before you bite off more than you can chew!

Borrowing from American History X, I’d like to end this blog entry like every good paper with a quote because “someone else has already said it best. So if you can’t top it, steal from them and go out strong.” I picked a quote from John Ruskin that a very successful local entrepreneur keeps in his email footer and that has impressed me quite a bit. I believe is key for any entrepreneurial activity because it puts the correlation between risk and return in a startup context:

“It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money … that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot. It can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that … you will have enough to pay for something better.”
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Justice For The Gluten-Free Community

Paul Seelig Mugshot
The awful case of Paul Seelig, the man who bought regular baked goods, re-labeled them and sold them as “gluten-free” specialty products, has come to a final end in court today. Even though it quite honestly infuriates me that this undeniably “bad guy” gets such extensive press coverage while the many hard-working good people in the gluten-free community don’t – this trial and the precedent it sets are too important to ignore. As a result, I join in on the news coverage.

I have followed this case closely since it happened right here in Custom Choice Cereal’s front yard in Durham, NC. For those of you who don’t know the background, here is a (quick) recap:

  • In fall 2009, Paul Seelig sells supposedly gluten-free bread at the State Fair and online. After several people suffering from celiac disease consume his products develop rashes, have stomach cramps, diarrhea, and in once case even give birth to the local gluten-free community tests his bread for gluten. Result: the gluten content was literally off the cart (>5,000ppm)!
  • Several Raleigh CSA Support Group including our friend Zach Becker from Gluten Free Raleigh alert the North Carolina Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services (NCDA&CS). When the NCDA&CS wants to inspect Mr. Seelig’s bakery (aka his house), a shirtless man claiming to be an employee named Jeff Gleason answers the door and says that Mr. Seelig “had had a heart attack, had cancer and the flu and was in a hospital in California”. As it later turned out, the representatives of the NCDA&CS faced Mr. Seelig, who invented the character of Jeff Gleason…
  • On January 20, 2010, the State of North Carolina files a lawsuit seeking a temporary restraining order against Paul Seelig
  • Before his court hearing for 9 felony charges of Obtaining Property by False Pretenses on June 7, 2010, Seelig offers prosecutors information on a suspect in the ongoing homicide investigation of State school board member Kathy Taft in exchange for some consideration on his felony charges. The man Mr. Seelig implicated was innocent and had absolutely nothing to do with the murder!
  • The criminal trial against Paul Seelig begins on March 28, 2011. The State of North Carolina has charged Mr. Seelig on at least 25 (!) felony counts of Obtaining Property via False Pretenses arising from his fraudulent sales of fake gluten-free baked
  • On April 8, 2011, Paul Seelig takes the stand and acknowledges that he had lied about his identity to investigators. However, he sticks to his story that he “had been buying gluten-free bread from a mysterious Amish bakery in Ohio that – being Amish – had no telephone, email or address. There were no payment records because he paid in cash”. The video below shows Paul Seelig testifying in court:
  • On Monday, April 11, 2011, a jury finds Paul Evan Seelig, 48, owner of Great Specialty Bread Co., guilty of 21 counts of fraud. He faces a maximum sentence of more than 17 years in prison.
  • Today, justice is served and Paul Seelig is sentenced to 110-132 months in prison without probation!!

The bottom line is that Paul Seelig lied to his customers and to prosecutors. I can only try to explain such awful behavior, and the single somewhat “plausible” answer to me is greed. Mr. Seelig has been convicted of wire fraud and grand theft before, serving 2 years in prison in the 1990s. This case sets a precedent on gluten-free claims manufacturers can make. It also shows how important it is to finally pass gluten-free labeling standards!

Celiac Sharing Her Story Of Going Gluten-Free

Jules Gluten-Free UNC CakeHappy Monday! I am still suffering a little bit from UNC’s loss against Kentucky in the NCAA tournament. However, I must admit that I am very pleased with their overall performance. Who would have thought in December that the Tar Heels will make it to the Elite Eight this year?? In addition, this picture of a very special gluten-free cake that my good friend Jules created lifted my mood significantly (even though it didn’t help UNC to a victory).

Back to business… I came across this video from THV in Arkansas. As you know, it’s our mission at Custom Choice Cereal to share information and educate about celiac disease and gluten intolerance, and I thought this video fit our mission. WIth a little caveat: while the commentator says that “gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley, rye and some oats” the truth is that most oats are cross-contaminated during harvesting and processing.

After a brief introduction that more and more people realize that they have gluten intolerance or celiac disease, a celiac who works at Whole Foods talks about how going helped her gradually transition to “less bloating and less tiredness and less achy joints and less headaches”. Does that sound familiar?? They also point out that “eliminating gluten is the only cure” – though I would have preferred the word “treatment”… It is indeed true that those of us on a gluten-free diet are much more aware of the food we put into our bodies – and the long-term consequences this has for our health and well-being!

Anne Luther, branch manager of the GIG of Central Arkansas, gives a vivid account on how far we’ve come since 2003 when she walked out of the grocery in tears and stresses the importance of avoiding cross-contamination. She also stresses that “Going partially gluten-free isn’t going to help you! You have to get it totally out.”

Gluten-Free Cereal Creativity

Happy Friday! You know that I’m a sucker for college basketball, so I am anxiously awaiting the sweet 16 game between the UNC Tar Heels and the Marquette Golden Eagles tonight. But before it comes to that it’s time to recognize the creative names your gave your gluten-free cereal creations this week!

The spectrum of creativity was extremely wide this week, ranging from the standard “I just name my cereal after myself” to some really funny and a few inappropriate names. Even though it was tempting, the Custom Choice Cereal crew decided not to recognize any names from the latter category… Here are this week’s winners:

5. Go Heels! (mix ID 1c7304). You can always get me with this.
4. Sunshine Morning (mix ID 3f8818) and Sunset Evening (mix ID 1f210e). Perfect for mornings AND evenings…
3. the guitar masta mix (mix ID 68d39a). Fueled with this you’ll play like the next Jimi Hendrix
2. Triathlete Power Crunch (mix ID f75edc). Go you!
1. And this week’s winner is the No, I dont want to share mix (mix ID bdf435). We can sympathize!

Thank you so much for making my job fun by entertaining me with great names for your custom cereals. Have a wonderful weekend!

Gluten Sensitivity Covered In The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal once again published an outstanding article including a video on a topic that concerns us all, this time focusing on non-celiac gluten sensitivity. And guess what? It was the most emailed article on the WSJ’s website yesterday! I think that’s pretty awesome and a great indicator how dear this topic is to many people.
Who Reacts to Gluten
A new study in the journal BMC Medicine shows that gluten can set off a distinct reaction in the intestines and the immune system, even in people who test negative for celiac disease. It concludes that the two gluten-associated disorders, celiac disease and gluten sensitivity, are different clinical entities. As lead author Alessio Fasano from the University of Maryland’s Center for Celiac Research says: “For the first time, we have scientific evidence that indeed, gluten sensitivity not only exists, but is very different from celiac disease. Though the details remain unknown, it is now clear that gluten triggers a quite extreme immune response in some modern humans.

Since gluten-containing grains such as wheat, rye and barley have been a staple of our diet for 10,000 years, it is not clear why both gluten sensitivity and celiac disease are on such a sharp rise. I have shared Joseph A. Murray’s research before, and he says about celiac disease that “people aren’t born with this. Something triggers it and with this dramatic rise in all ages, it must be something pervasive in the environment”. One of the possible answers: agricultural changes to wheat and other gluten containing grains that have boosted their protein content.

Gluten intolerance or gluten sensitivity, however is much less researched and thus much more vague. As our friend Cynthia Kupper, Executive Director at Gluten Intolerance Group of North America, rightly points out: “There’s a lot more that needs to be done for people with gluten sensitivity. But at least we now recognize that it’s real and that these people aren’t crazy.” As of now, a gluten-free diet is the only treatment recommended for both gluten sensitivity and celiac disease.

Have you or your child tested negative for celiac disease but seen significant improvements on a gluten-free diet? What tests did your doctor run on you to determine a gluten sensitivity?

College Athlete With Celiac Disease

Living with celiac disease is quite a challenge for anyone but it’s especially tough for athletes who need to maintain their weight – through grueling workouts and a high metabolism. Examples such as Cincinnati Bengals’ Running Back Cedric Benson, UFC’s Dennis Hallmann, LPG star Sarah Jane Smith and quite a few others show us every day that it is absolutely possible to be a top performer with celiac disease in various sports.
Utah's Diana Rolniak Has Celiac Disease
All these guys are full-time professional athletes though. I was therefore very impressed when I read how Utah’s women’s basketball player Diana Rolniak learned to cope with celiac disease as a college athlete. Diagnosed just before her senior year in high school in July 2008, Diana was trying to play basketball while dropping below 100 pounds – which is clearly not a healthy weight for the 6-foot-4 forward!

What I find most encouraging is the support she gets from the team. Interim head coach Anthony Levrets said that “On the road, we’ve figured out the restaurants that cater to gluten-free … that she’s comfortable with. And all of the hotels we stay in, we make sure they’re able to prepare gluten-free meals to go along with our pregame meals.” That’s pretty awesome! But Diana has also developed a few tricks that I think are worth sharing:

  • set up specific living arrangements in order to prevent cross-contamination and living by herself
  • preparing all of her meals and learning to cook
  • having two bowls of cereal, two yogurts, eggs and a homemade sandwich for breakfast

I have a great suggestion how Diana can add unrivaled variety to her daily gluten-free cereal bowl :-) But besides this, I was wondering if you know someone in college who has celiac disease or lives gluten-free? How do they manage? And do you have any advice to share from their experience?