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Hi everyone, my 4 year old child has just been diagnosed with celiac. Can anyone with experience please share tips and ideas.
Thanx in advance.
orgran products are really good you can buy them in tesco or anywhere really u can prob get them on prescription, and i think they have a hechsher and some things really taste good!!(ur english right?)
Learn how to make lots of rice-based meals and get good practice at reading labels. Avoiding accidental gluten ingestion is much more important than finding fancy or look-alike food for him/her to eat.
You can bake cakes/biscuits with potato flour, so therefore, you can make no gebrokt cakes for all year round use. There are some good recipes in the Heimeishe cookbook from Nitra.
Contact the celiac society online and you can find a world of infomation.
Behatzlacha and Gut, Gezunt Chodesh!
Yes they have pretty much everything, although im not sure if everything is kosher but tons of their stuff is.
Im pretty sure you can get loads of orgran products free on prescription for children, ask ur GP. Good luck!!
Uh yes -Don’t eat flour from wheat. (Other grains too.) JK
Hi. We are only doing this for a few months, so I don’t know that much. One good thing I did was to pull out Pesach recipes, I found a lot of good recipes there. Also, the Orgran flour is great. Making your own mix is cheaper, but Orgran tastes regular and works great in most recipes. I found with mixes I needed so many different flours for different recipes, it was very overwhelming. Also, remember that so many things are naturally gluten free. Tuna, eggs, chicken, meat, potatoes, rice…so most of my meals are regular. Good luck, it is definitely hard.
Hi TRCG, first off, please don’t be daunted by this. Yes, your child can have an equivalent of almost any food out there. Its a little more expensive but its there. Also, I am in the US and I dont know how many people know this but the additional cost of gluten free food is tax deductible. Here is what I mean. If a loaf of bread is 2 dollars and a gluten free loaf is 4, you can take a tax deduction of 2 dollars. The same is for travel to get the gluten free food. The mileage/tolls/parking. All tax deductible. Now, please get a hold of 2 books. Gluten free food for kids by Sanderson and A Taste of Tradition by Ansh. They are fantastic resources for gluten free cooking even for yomim tovim and shabbos. Also, log onto the NY Presbyterian hospital’s celiac center web site. It is fantastic for new diagnosis. Ask a nutritionist for an eval. Though the problem is with gluten, if your child is still in the reactive phase they are now also per-force lactose intolerant until the villi in the gut heal. He/she may need a nutritional supplemet. Be wary of commercial foods. Stay away from things labeled with “modified food starch” unless its Kraft which will list what the starch was (at least in the US). Stock up on non-gebrokts pesach food after pesach. the stores are getting rid of it and you will need it. If you have a specific question I will try to help.
we should all be wary of commercial foods. For baking starches,beyond rice, there is sorghum, teff, millet, tapioca, quinoa, and buckwheat.
we should all be wary of commercial foods. For baking starches,beyond rice, there is sorghum, teff, millet, tapioca, quinoa, and buckwheat.
There is hidden gluten in many commercial products so be really vigilant when buying such items as Ketchup, sauces, etc. Even medicines whether OTC or prescription can be problematic, as there are minute traces of gluten used to bind many meds. It can be managed, it is just challenging, but not undoable. It is good that your child is young enough to not be firmly entrenched in gluten eating. CHEX corn cereal is a great cereal for celiac patients (they have some others,a s well, and a relative of mine crushes it to use as a breading for foods that previously had bread crumbs or matzoh meal).
in the US there is pasta made from brown rice. Quinoa is another good side dish. We freeze tons of non-gebrocks stuff (fish loaves, croutons, cake mix) in post pesach clearance sales (otherwise the stuff is very pricey)to use all year. Find out from the doctor if it is enough for your child to have food without gluten, or if s/he needs it to say ‘gluten free’ on the label. Different kids have different sensitivity levels.
I dont know if there is an equivilant anywhere near Gateshead, but for those who live in the NYC area there is “The Gluten Free Shoppe” in Boro Park.
Regarding tax deductible….Blue Cross allows me to use FSA dollars for the purchase of Gluten Free products (if in USA, speak to your health insurance company), the paperwork is a bit tedious and all claims must include a letter of medical necessity, but it certainly helps offset the costs of GF foods.
Most major commercial food companies now list all major allergens on their packaging.
Try an Holistic nutritionist. There is an amazing woman who works in this field in Brooklyn, perhaps she can help you over the phone. She did great work with my sister in law in this area. Let me know if you’d like more details.
Find out from the doctor if it is enough for your child to have food without gluten, or if s/he needs it to say ‘gluten free’ “
Respectfully, I must slightly disagree with you. If someone has celiac, they are not just degrees of sensitive. They are gluten-sensitive. period. Someone with a gluten ALLERGY is not the same as having celiac. People who are allergic might be able to eat trace amounts or even occasional amounts of a substance without great incident.
People with celiac however, damage the villi of their stomach lining (which chalilah could lead to a VERY serious situation) whenever their stomach comes in contact even with the tiniest amount of gluten (could be there was a tiny speck of flour on the soup spoon you used to stir the gluten free food. Someone with celiac disease, is SO sensitive, that even that slight amount will harm them, and the damage can take weeks, if not months, to heal. Think of it in this way. How much chametz can you mix into Pesach food and still be allowed to eat it? NONE. Not even a speck. It is not bateil in anything. If you look at gluten as chametz (and most chametz DOES contain gluten), it will be easier to understand how improtant it is to not expose it to the person with celiac.
It will take getting used to, but in the long run, this is a condition that can be totally handled with careful attention to the diet, and there is no danger of incident if that diet is adhered to scrupulously. Unlike diabetics who must monitor their sugar, might need insulin or other medications, and could have bad reactions to rise and fall of sugar levels, the person with celiac can live a completely typical life, just without gluten. B”H there is plenty to eat that has no gluten in it.
For more info call 845-657-1117
Dr. Green wrote the “bible” on Celiac disease. A family member went to him after being diagnosed and he really knows his stuff. He is on the overly-cautious side, but with celiac, you really have to be, apparently.
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