Our neighbors to the North are also concerned about celiac disease and are researching potential drugs that celiacs can use to treat their condition. Custom Choice Cereal was very excited when we came across a pill that showed promising results in the first clinical trials.

Dr. Richard N. Fedorak from the University of Alberta has helped to develop a drug called Larazotide Acetate.

The drug comes in form of a pill and has shown to prevent some of the damage to the small intestine that gluten. While it is not meant as a cure for celiac disease it can provide some freedom and relief after an accidental ingestion of gluten. The drug could become available as early as 2012.

It’s a small step but at least a step in the right direction. As part of our customer service we will as always keep our ears and eyes open and update you in case we hear about any new developments!

Custom Choice Cereal came across a review of a book describing what seems to be a very interesting approach to a healthy diet. The book is called “Going against the Grain” and was reviewed by Liz Schau on the Tampa Gluten Free Examiner.

Author Melissa Diane Smith challenges the common advice that grains should be the foundation of our diet. She writes that quite the contrary is true as grains are connected to a variety of conditions, including celiac disease, gluten intolerance, obesity, diabetes, Syndrome X, autoimmune disorders, allergies, and digestive problems. She therefore takes a rather radical view, addressing the nutritional problems of grains and suggesting their elimination from our diets.

One of our New Year resolutions was to read a book every month, so we are very happy to have another candidate that makes it to our list. It will beyond doubt be an interesting read!

Custom Choice Cereal feels privileged that Dr. Stephen Wangen agreed to answer your questions on celiac disease, gluten intolerance, wheat allergy and anything around a gluten-free life once a month. The good news: you can still post your questions as comments to yesterday’s third Q&A session with Dr. Wangen blog entry.

We mentioned before that Dr. Wangen wrote the book “Healthier without Wheat”. Tina Turbin from GlutenFreeHelp coincidentally reviewed Dr. Wangen’s book on her blog yesterday. She writes that “My highest respect goes to Dr. Wagnen for his straightforward approach to clarifying the test available for determining celiac disease as well as the testing for non-celiac forms of gluten intolerance. In the end, anyone reading this book will have a full understanding of how wheat can affect one’s life…”

We think that this is a great encouragement to ask Dr. Wangen your questions. It’s a rare opportunity to be able to interact directly with such a high-profile expert, so please don’t be shy!

It’s time again for Custom Choice Cereal’s monthly Q&A session with Dr. Stephen Wangen. Dr. Wangen co-founded the IBS Treatment Center in Seattle and also blogs under the name of The Gluten Free Doctor. You are invited to ask anything you’ve always wanted to know about celiac disease, gluten intolerance, wheat allergy, or the gluten-free diet.

We are very thankful that Dr. Wangen has agreed to provide this outstanding service to you. Out of respect for his busy schedule and because Dr. Wangen informed us that he is traveling this week, we decided to limit the number of questions to a total of 4. Questions will be accepted on a first come, first serve basis.  Since he has only limited access to his emails, it will also take Dr. Wangen a little bit longer to provides his answers. Otherwise everything will work as before in three easy steps:

1. Post your question as a comment to this blog entry
2. Dr. Wangen will answer your question and post it as a reply
3. You read the answer. Simple enough

We hope for your understanding and encourage you to post additional questions at any time to Custom Choice Cereal’s facebook page. We aren’t doctors but will do our best to answer your questions as soon and as best as we can. Please join us in thanking Dr. Wangen for taking the time to answer your questions!

Not only do we believe that a healthy and balanced diet is important for one’s overall well-being, Custom Choice Cereal also experienced this first hand. When Zach from Gluten Free Raleigh gave us the great advice to shop only along the perimeter of the grocery store about one-and-a-half months ago we took his advice to heart. Some of the key improvements that we experienced are

• less trouble getting up in the morning (“better” sleep)
• more energy
• just the right weight loss (in time for spring )

A website that we wanted to point out in this context is Health by Gini. It states on her website that “Gini Warner has developed nutritional programs for [...] food allergies and overall nutritional balance.” Her allergy program specifically mentions gluten (wheat), dairy, eggs and nuts. She emailed us that she also covers shellfish and soy. Since we are not sure if “nuts” means tree nuts and/or peanuts this means she covers almost all of the “big eight” allergens (with the exception of fish and possibly tree nuts/peanuts).

Gini provides counseling over the phone to anyone who cannot come to her office. She also has a couple of impressive testimonials on her website, and if anyone has tried her services we’d be very curious to hear your feedback.

The celiac community in North Carolina, across the United States, and even internationally was very upset when the news surfaced of a company in North Carolina advertising its bread as gluten-free even though it wasn’t. Local celiacs helped unmask this scheme by writing about it on their blogs (such as Fred from Juno Nutrition whose tests revealed the bread did contain gluten). Since the company was subsequently shut and and since Custom Choice Cereal tries to look at the bright side of things, we looked at the potential positive long-term effects of this de-facto enforcement of gluten-free labeling in January.

A very active local celiac who writes the blog Gluten Free Raleigh provided a great summary of the court hearing on Great Special Products and its owner Mr. Seelig that took place on February 2 here in Raleigh. During a meeting of the local chapter of the Celiac Sprue Association that took place last, representatives of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services were so kind to give an update on the case. We try to summarize the most important take-aways below.

• They thanked the celiac community because without them this would not have been possible – from bringing the case to their attention, to testifying in court, to increasing the number of complaints, local celiacs played a crucial role
• Great Specialty Products has been shut down, and the website has been taken offline
• Please do NOT consume any products you might still have at home!
• A Preliminary Injunction is in effect, and while the word “preliminary” might sound like this measure might expire or be temporary, it does in fact mean that additional legal action is required to remove it
• Complaints keep coming in (including one from Iowa on Wednesday). If you purchased bread or other bakery products from Great Specialty Products - especially in January 2010 – and have not already done so, please contact the NCDA&CS
• Anonymous complaints can be filed and have the same weight, the only difference is that the filer won’t be contacted

The next court date is set for February 24th, and we will definitely keep you posted on what will happen then.

Custom Choice Cereal had a day packed with meetings yesterday. While we usually rather spend time talking with our customers (about new gluten-free ingredients) and cerealizing your gluten-free creations, it is helpful to learn other’s people perspectives on our business. And trust us, it is too early to reveal, but we have some tricks up our sleeves…

Most of you have probably heard of professional road racing cyclist Lance Armstrong who won the Tour de France seven consecutive years from 1999 to 2005 after an amazing story of successfully battling cancer. Most of you probably also know that he subsequently founded the Lance Armstrong Foundation to fight cancer. He also started LIVESTRONG.COM as the “the definitive daily health, fitness and lifestyle destination”.

LIVESTRONG.COM actually has a very informative section on celiac disease that is worth browsing through. While we feel that some of the background information on celiac disease is better presented for example by the Celiac Sprue Association, we really like the many articles on celiac disease that are listed there. Check it out and let us know what you think!

Custom Choice Cereal finds it hard to believe but we’re really writing again about research on celiac disease. At least it is a good sign that the medical community has identified celiac as a serious enough topic to allocate more resources to it. While yesterday’s blog entry was about the benefits of gluten-free summer camp for celiac children, we are a little bit more practical today.

Danish researchers from the Odense University Hospital used a simple questionnaire with only 5 questions to identify children with a high likelihood of suffering from celiac disease. They were able to diagnose an additional 14 celiac children in a region that previously had only 13 known kids with celiac disease, i.e. the rate of successfully diagnosed kids more than doubled! The questions they asked were

• Has your child ever suffered from abdominal pain more than twice during the last three months?
• Has your child ever had diarrhea lasting more than two weeks?
• Does your child have a tendency to firm and hard stools?
• Does your child gain enough weight?
• Does your child gain enough height?

You can also read the article on this research directly at WebMD’s Celiac Disease Health Center.

When Custom Choice Cereal was in the process of setting up our gluten-free facility and operations in June 2009, we posted about calling manufacturers of different cleaning supplies to make sure they are gluten-free. To our own shock we had to find out back then that a lot of them actually contained wheat, and it made us realize that “this stuff really is everywhere”.

We are not trying to sound too schizophrenic, but at the end of the day we need to ensure for your safety that our facility truly is gluten-free. Along the same lines your dish soap at your homes is in direct contact with utensils that you subsequently use to consume food. If your dishes are porous there actually might be a danger that the dish soap you use cross-contaminates the food with wheat (= gluten). Granted the likelihood of this happening is small, but if you or your child(ren) have an extreme case of celiac disease you cannot be careful enough.

We therefore only use Mrs. Meyer’s Household Cleaners. The following is an encouraging statement that we copied from the company’s website:

All cleaners work really well and are available through the website or at Target. Our conclusion: great product and highly recommended at least for dish soap if you want to be on the safe side. If this is a concern of yours or if you use another product, please let us know and leave a comment!

Over the past months of operations we have met a lot of great people who are involved in raising awareness for celiac disease, helping fellow celiacs, and finding and sharing gluten-free information. Borrowing terminology from Zach, writer of the blog Gluten Free Raleigh, we refer to some of these as our “internet friends”. Hopefully Custom Choice Cereal will have a chance to meet more and more of them as time goes on!

To some of these friends we are talking on a regular basis, and one of them is Cain who refers to himself as “Head Honcho” of The Celiac Maniac.com. Cain started a Gluten-Free Online Radio that broadcasts every Thursday from 1:30pm – 2:30pm PST. Today starting at approximately 4:50pm EST we will talk live to Cain about our company, our gluten-free facility, our products, and our philosophy. It should be interesting and fun, so please join!