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Hope y’all had a wonderful, relaxing, healthy Labor Day Weekend! Guess that officially means that the summer is over… Looking at the bright side of things – which we at Custom Choice Cereal always prefer – football season is back on. And that’s always a great thing  But back to the “really” important things in life…
 Today is once again the first Wednesday of of the month aka Dr. Wangen Wednesday! This means that 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:
- Post your question as a comment to this blog entry
- We send all questions to Dr. Wangen
- Dr. Wangen answers and we publish what he says in reply to your comments
- 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!
 We hope all of you enjoyed the long 4th of July weekend with the four “F”: family, friends, fun and some great gluten-free food!
Having entered the second half of 2011, we at Custom Choice Cereal continue the good tradition of making the first Wednesday of each month known as Dr. Wangen Wednesday. On this special day, our good friend and outstanding advisor Dr. Stephen Wangen answers any question you might have about celiac disease, gluten intolerance and happily living gluten-free!
Stephen has an amazing understanding of the challenges that a gluten-free diet brings with it from personal experience since he suffers from celiac himself. More importantly, he is very passionate about helping others. This passion was a call that he answered by making it his professional career, 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. We therefore kindly ask you to check how many comments have already been posted before adding yours. For now, 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:
- Post your question as a comment to this blog entry
- We send all questions to Dr. Wangen
- Dr. Wangen answers and we publish what he says in reply to your comments
- Check back for the answer to your question a few days later or simply subscribe to our blog
We are looking forward to another informative and insightful gluten-free Q&A session and can’t wait to read your questions. There is so much we learn from you, so we are extremely excited about this rare but wonderful occasion where everybody wins!
Today 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:
- Post your question as a comment to this blog entry
- We send all questions to Dr. Wangen
- Dr. Wangen answers and we publish what he says in reply to your comments
- 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!
It’s a big day for the gluten-free community: the gluten-free labeling summit will take place in DC today AND it’s the first Wednesday of Celiac Awareness Month! For this reason we are particularly thrilled let you know that first monthly Wednesdays are (at least here) also known as Dr. Wangen Wednesdays because Custom Choice Cereal’s friend and advisor Dr. Stephen Wangen answers your questions 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:
- Post your question as a comment to this blog entry
- We send all questions to Dr. Wangen
- Dr. Wangen answers and we publish what he says in reply to your comments
- 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!
The summer edition of Living Without came out. This magazine for people with allergies and food sensitivities is a truly outstanding resource for anyone following an allergen-friendly diet. Especially now with celiac disease awareness month in full swing they offer a lot a delicious gluten-free and wheat-free recipes. The reason we at Custom Choice Cereal are super excited about this particular issue is that it includes our custom gluten-free cereal in the “Try It” section as one of Living Without’s Favorites! They write:
“It doesn’t have to be the same old thing for breakfast. Thanks to Custom Choice Cereals, you can design a nutritious dry cereal blend precisely to your taste and your special dietary needs. Log onto the easy-to-use website and choose your ingredients… Your cereal mix with customized nutrition label shows up at your door a few days later. It’s that simple—and simply delicious.”
Have your created your personal gluten-free cereal yet? Or do you have an ingredient suggestion for us? We are learning every single day and greatly appreciate your input! Thank you for helping us bringing taste and unrivaled variety to the gluten-free cereal bowl!
The Custom Choice Cereal team was torn for quite some time because we had to make a very difficult decision for last weekend: attend the gluten-free expo in Asheville, the one in Charlotte, or the one in Chicago? We had a great time in Chicago last year and also enjoyed the Ingles Gluten-Free Fair 2010 in Asheville. After long discussions we therefore said to ourselves: “Why not try something new and go to Charlotte?” And so we did.
When we entered the venue of the Charlotte Gluten-Free Expo at 9am we were welcomed by a buzz that really transformed us into fair mode! The aisle to the main vendor room was lined with stands, and plenty of people already poured in to listen to gluten-free research superstar Dr. Alessio Fasano from the Celiac Disease Research Center at the University of Maryland. Later on there also was a chance to take a gluten-free baking class with our good friend Jules Shepard – who welcomed us at the first stand when entering the main room.
The vendor room itself was PACKED even before the doors openend! We were truly amazed at the variety of gluten-free manufacturers that were there. Of course we saw most of the big names. However, it was awesome to see quite a few smaller local companies (like us) such as Tasty-Yo (frozen yogurt that is simply delicious in combination with our custom cereal), Polka Dot Bake Shop, Labrems Cookies and gluten-free pizza from FUEL serving the gluten-free community. These last guys have a store right around the corner from the expo and sampled an incredible 82 (!!) boxes of pizza!
Once the doors opened, we were super busy until the very end of the expo! It was so much fun to finally put some faces on the names of people we know as frequent customers of our custom gluten-free cereal or have just emailed with. Fortunately we had learned from our previous expo experiences and brought plenty of water to drink. Trust us when we say that your throat will get dry and sore after 5 hours of talking… People were amazed to learn that they can create their perfect gluten-free cereal online. They loved the fact that they can even name their personal mix and receive it conveniently at their doorstep. Fortunately we had brought exactly the right amount of samples so that at the end of the day we just ran out. After receiving a comment on our facebook page (where you can also see more pictures of the event) today we know why: 1,137 hungry attendees!!
Let us finish with a great advice that we learned from a few veteran expo visitors: bring tupperware boxes and/or ziplog bags for samples to take home! That way you don’t miss out on all the great foods because you’re too full after you made your way only through half the vendors
 The Custom Choice Cereal team had the luxury to tour the Whole Foods Gluten-Free Bakehouse yesterday evening. Fortunately for us it is located right around the corner just 15 miles from our own office here in in North Carolina. It was pretty awesome to see the operation that is producing so many great gluten-free goodies for us. Organized by the Raleigh CSA support group (Thank you Patricia!), roughly 30 people took advantage of the opportunity to catch a glimpse behind the scenes of how Whole Foods makes its gluten-free baked goods.
After all of us had been equipped with very fashionable hair nets we were admitted to the actual warehouse – and welcomed by Lee Tobin who had prepared two sampling tables with about 30 gluten-free goodies to try. Everything was really good but favorites were the Light White Bread that was even un-toasted not distinguishable from regular bread and the almond cookies. Lee also shared a pretty funny story about the bread: the size of the bread increased over time (that’s a good thing!) so the original bag they used to package it in became too small. The solution? They now package it in a larger bag first, then cool it down, and only after that fit it into the original bag. You’ll see that it packaged in two bags if you buy it. We also caught a pretty lucky time to visit because crew was busy baking the world’s largest gluten-free cake for the Gluten-Free Food Labeling Summit. You can see that Lee is wearing the t-shirt – the first pink t-shirt he wore since the 1980s – for the event on May 4th in Washington, DC.
 During the tour, we learned that the bakehouse is a dedicated gluten-free and thus also wheat-free facility. Whole Foods does have a couple of baked goods containing nuts, soy, eggs and milk. They do however have a very strict policy and clean all utensils, bowls and machines between baking batches of goods with a certain allergen and those without or with different allergens. It was very re-assuring to see and hear! At the same time, they test a sample of every batch of incoming ingredients as well as a sample of every batch of outgoing product for potential gluten contamination. In the cold storage room, Whole Foods also keeps all allergen-free ingredients on one side and any ingredient containing eggs, milks, nuts or soy on the other side. It’s those little differences that really count!
We also learned that being a batter mixer is physically quite a demanding job. Imagine mixing 20-24 huge bowls of around 200lb of batter per day – and lifting two 50lb bags of ingredients per batch. Do the math and you’ll see that you would lift at least 2,000lb of ingredients! All of the great baked gluten-free goods that you buy at Whole Foods across the country have been baked in one of their four industrial ovens. They keep them running around the clock, and it was pretty impressive to see those machines in action. Since the facility tour followed the path of production, we also saw the packaging area, the huge freezer they are so proud of, and the really really big warehouse. Fortunately for us is, we passed by the sampling table one more time on our way out ☺
Is there any gluten-free baked good that you would like Whole Foods to create? As we learned it takes an impressive average of around 100 test runs (of 200lb of batter) until a new product can be produced for the market, so don’t wait any longer and leave a comment now!
Those of you who have been diagnosed with celiac disease or gluten intolerance know that switching to a gluten-free diet is indeed a life changer. As one of our previous surveys revealed, over 72% of you felt significant improvements in their well-being within the first month of changing their diet.
While those are great news for those who find out the reason for their symptoms, it is estimated that a shockingly high number of 97% of those who suffer from celiac disease do not know what causes their pain. The logical next question for us at Custom Choice Cereal to ask was the following:
Which area of your life has changed most since you/your child went gluten-free?
Before going into the details we’d like to thank the 83 of you who took our 3-second-poll. You helped us achieve the best participation rate so far, and as you know the accuracy of the survey increases with the sample size. It’d be great if we could reach even more people with our latest poll (see left sidebar), so please help us spread the word by tweeting and posting this blog on facebook!
The graph below sums up the results better than our words ever could. The high level result is going out remains the toughest part of living gluten-free as indicated by over 43% of you. On the bright side, family life at home (selected by 14.5% of all participants) seems manageable thanks to a constantly improving market for gluten-free foods.
It’s another first Wednesday of the month, aka Dr. Wangen Wednesday! As always, Custom Choice Cereal’s friend and advisor Dr. Stephen Wangen will answer any question you might have about celiac disease and gluten intolerance, which, as latest research reveals, is distinctly different from celiac disease.
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:
- Post your question as a comment to this blog entry
- We send all questions to Dr. Wangen
- Dr. Wangen answers and we publish what he says in reply to your comments
- 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!
It’s Dr. Wangen Wednesday! As on every first Wednesday of the month, our friend, advisor and celiac disease expert Dr. Stephen Wangen will answer your questions about celiac disease, gluten intolerance, living without wheat, and whatever else want to know!
Stephen has celiac disease and has the exact same concerns that you might have. From both his personal and professional experience, he understands the challenges of a gluten-free diet, and is very passionate about helping you. Similar to us, his 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 concerns.
Asking your question is easy and can be done in just 4 simple steps:
- Post your question as a comment to this blog entry
- We send all questions to Dr. Wangen
- Dr. Wangen’s answers will be published in reply to your comments
- To check for the answer to your question you can either subscribe to our blog or simply check back in a few days
Wondering what tests you should have taken? What areas do you have difficulties with? What kind of (unusual) symptoms do you have? Any concerns about the constant “are oats gluten-free” debate? He can help so don’t be shy and ask away!
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Gluten-free Cereal Cerealize your Gluten Freedom! Our blog serves to share all things gluten-free and give you the occasional update on what's happening at Custom Choice Cereal.
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