Custom Choice Cereal pointed out less than a month ago that one of the few gluten-free summer camps in the US is located in our beautiful State of North Carolina. Camp Kanata’s gluten-free week this year will be from June 27 to July 3. If you are interested in this for your child(ren) you should act quickly since the camp is usually booked by late February!

This being said we feel the need to share some very interesting research findings from the University of California San Francisco’s Department of Pediatrics. These might serve as an encouragement to (re-)enroll your child(ren) in a gluten-free summer camp this summer. A brief summary of the research report was printed in the online version of Pediatrics, The Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The research team asked 104 children with celiac disease aged 7 to 17 to answer a survey consisting of 14 questions, and 77 of them completed the questionnaire at the beginning and at the end of a week at a gluten-free summer camp. The results were astonishing:

• All children felt improvement in well-being, self-perception, and emotional outlook
• None felt different from other kids or frustrated by their diet
• Campers on a gluten-free diet for less than 4 years reported improvements in 11 of the 14 questions
• The positive effects were more pronounced in children who had been on a gluten-free diet for less than 4 years versus those who had been gluten-free for longer

While the long-term effects need further investigation, the study concludes that “stress and anxiety around food and social interactions” can at least temporarily be alleviated by the safe environment of a gluten-free summer camp.

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.

It’s Friday, which usually means that Custom Choice Cereal publishes the funniest/most creative mix names that you came up with for your gluten-free cereal. But there is no rule without exceptions…

Instead we wanted to share with you another website that allows your to publish your reviews on gluten-free restaurants, hotels, resorts, cruise ships, and grocery stores. Since it focuses on preparing you for your travels, the site is called GlutenFreeTravelSite.com.

What we found especially interesting is that the site recognized Florida as the “World’s Most Celiac-Friendly Destination“. We did the check, and the site is actually operated out of Virginia, which lends this award even more credibility. What struck us was the reason for this result. The large number of (apparently good) reviews for Disney properties made Florida the winner because they take special diets very seriously. Maybe we should plan our next vacation in sunny Florida??

CUSTOM CHOICE CEREAL WISHES ALL OF YOU A HAPPY, HEALTHY, AND GLUTEN-FREE NEW YEAR!

We would also like to Thank all of You who have been so supportive and continue to help us spread the word about our gluten-free customized cereal mixes! The months since our launch in October have been very exciting, and we cannot believe that only three months have passed.

How better to end the year than sharing great gluten-free recipes with you? Thanks to Lauren from Canada who writes the blog Celiac Teen we only have to post a link because she posted a great summary of her favorite gluten-free muffins, cupcakes, waffles, biscuits, and cakes. Thank you, Lauren!

Gluten-free cooking expert Jules Shepard – also know as Jules Gluten Free – was here in Raleigh in November to teach one of her classes. Custom Choice Cereal met with her then and wrote about her on this blog. She is now featured with a video on My FOX DC, and we thought that this is worth sharing.

Jules points out some of her holiday dishes in this short video but the best part is the recipe for peanut-free, tree nut-free, dairy-free, soy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, and wheat-free Buckeye Candies that is published on the website. They look delicious in the video and according to host Tony Perkins also smelled great! Click on the picture below to watch the video with Jules and read the recipe.

Custom Choice Cereal wishes everyone a Gluten-free Merry Christmas!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year… if it wasn’t for the uncertainties around all the delicious food, which those of you with celiac disease or gluten intolerance have to deal with. The ideal Christmas would allow you not to worry about the food that you eat. However, putting the worries aside for a couple of days can result in cheating on your gluten-free diet with severe consequences.

The team at Custom Choice Cereal thought about this issue and realized that so many of you have great advice on how to enjoy a gluten-free Christmas. Unfortunately, these tips are all over the place and maybe some of you have some great tricks you would like to share but have not yet found an opportunity to do so.

As a service to everyone on a gluten-free diet, we would like you to tell us what you do to make sure that your Holidays are gluten-free and truly enjoyable. Please comment here or on our facebook page, or send us an email to info@customchoicecereal.com. We would love to hear what you have to say and are looking forward to receiving your advice!

Hope all of you had a great gluten-free Thanksgiving! My old high school friend Dustin invited me to spend the weekend with him, his wife, and his son in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Dustin has started to reduce his gluten intake and feels significantly better, so I also brought him some gluten-free Custom Choice Cereal. He recently took up blogging as well, and I wanted to share his “Visions, thoughts & ideas from a Jesus freak” about Thanksgiving. As a true Southerner, Dustin fried the turkey – I learned some time ago that anything goes fried in the South. Just to be on the safe side we decided to do the frying outside as you can see from the picture. I must say it was very crisp and truly delicious!

While we were still digesting the turkey on Friday, Dustin and his family were struck by a tragedy – their beautiful and truly awesome dog Stella was hit by a car and died. We had to bury her and then spent the rest of the day in her remembrance. I took the picture below a day earlier when she was sleeping on the couch.

Custom Choice Cereal wishes everyone a Happy gluten-free Thanksgiving and a wonderful long holiday weekend! Hopefully your result will look (and taste) as delicious as our turkey did last year.