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.

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.

Custom Choice Cereal is very happy to host the second Q&A session with Dr. Stephen Wangen today.

Dr. Wangen is also known as The Gluten Free Doctor, co-founded the Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) Treatment Center in Seattle, WA, and wrote the book “Healthier Without Wheat”. He is specializes in digestive disorders and food allergies and can answer all your questions on celiac disease, gluten intolerance, wheat allergy, and their respective symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment.

Here is how it works in three easy steps:

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

We are expecting great questions from you and hope we can learn in the process as well, so please don’t hold back!

You know how it is: you here about something once and within the next couple of days or weeks, the same thing gets mentioned again and again. This is what happened to Custom Choice Cereal about a summer camp that has a gluten-free week every year. Having been a counselor in a YMCA summer camp in Massachusetts himself in 2001, Hajo had to write about this.

Camp Kanata is located here in North Carolina and is run by the YMCA of the Triangle. Their gluten-free week this year is from June 27 to July 3, and we’ve been told that this week is usually fully booked by the end of February, so you should act quickly.

All meals during gluten-free week are safe to eat for kids with celiac disease or gluten intolerance, which allows them to feel normal and lets them enjoy daily camp life with other campers without worries about their diet. We believe it is a great opportunity that you should definitely consider if your child eats gluten-free.

As many of you probably know from experience, baking without gluten can be a challenge because the gluten protein is responsible for making dough elastic and stretchy. It also traps gas in baked goods which results in a light, airy structure.

Custom Choice Cereal wrote about the most important take-aways from a celiac support group meeting that we attended in our blog entry Celiac disease & gluten-free diet options. But speaker Lesley Stanford from the Duke Children’s Hospital & Health Center also shared a short guide on gluten-free baking. The guide was compiled by the Colorado State University Extension, a center that offers “reliable, research-based information to help you make informed decisions”.

The guide includes

• an overview of gluten replacement products and their qualities
• gluten-free flour blend formulations
• advice on gums and binders (eggs are the most common binder in
  gluten-free baking)
• tips on how to increase moisture, enhance flavor/structure/texture

Whether you’ve had trouble baking gluten-free or are an expert, we highly recommend you download by clicking on the picture below.  It’s definitely worthwhile to print and have it handy in the kitchen at all times!

Last night Custom Choice Cereal went to a presentation by Lesley Stanford (MS, RD, CSP) who is the dietitian clinician at Duke Children’s Hospital & Health Center here in North Carolina. Lesley shared some great information and resources that we want to pass along to you as part of our customer service. We must admit though that the advice and tips from people in the audience were extremely helpful as well.

Here are the most important take-aways from the meeting:

• Kitchen items that have to be kept entirely gluten-free and might require a second purchase for food safety reasons are colanders (draining pasta), pizza stones, and toasters
• Lots of children with type 1 diabetes also test positive for celiac disease even if they do not show any symptoms. As a result, Duke is now testing all of them for celiac disease
• The University of Chicago’s Celiac Disease Center offers a gluten-free care package including a gluten-free food guide and food samples to anyone that has been diagnosed with celiac disease through a biopsy in the past three months.  Please call (773) 702-7593

These are some of the tips and resources that were new to us. Please feel free to add further tips and advice by commenting on this blog entry!

P.S. This is by the way our 100th blog post!!

It happened: since we at Custom Choice Cereal try to keep you informed about everything that is going on around gluten-free food and celiac disease, today is the first time we feel obliged to publish a second blog entry. Both our entries are related and contain pretty crucial information, so here we go.

The great Q&A series with Dr. Sheila Crowe in The New York Times that recently wrote about some answers on the ways to diagnose celiac disease (our first blog entry today) published another set of answers yesterday. This time it covers questions about celiac disease running in a family and genetic tests that might confirm diagnosis.

Her answers include the confirmation that the Irish in fact do have a higher disposition to celiac disease. The genes that predispose for celiac (human leukocyte antigens H.L.A. DQ2 and H.L.A. DQ8) can be tested with a simple sample of cells from inside the mouth. She also points out that there is an important differentiation to make between IgE (tests for food allergies, NOT celiac disease) and IgA and IgG (which are used in checking for possible celiac disease).

Dr. Crowe’s best advice that runs through the article: get tested with a TTG IgA test! Custom Choice Cereal’s best advice: read the article!