Living Gluten Free

Being a Celiac sufferer means you can’t eat anything that contains gluten, which is a kind of protein found in wheat, rye, barley, malts and triticale. Basically, you can't eat most kinds of breads, cookies, cakes, pastries, breaded foods and most processed foods. So practically, in this junk-food laden world, I could eat nothing — or at least this is what I thought at first.

I started the diet 10 days ago, and I’m definitely not yet totally gluten free. You really can’t imagine how many products include gluten, even vitamins and medicines. The creamer I added to my daily cup of coffee turned to be gluten ‘contaminated’ too — for food’s sake. But ultimately, it’s a lifestyle change, and mostly for the better as I have come to discover.

The good part though is that you are mostly stuck with healthy options, meaning you've got to get creative. The first couple of days I kind of starved myself because I was really scared to eat most things. You see, I’m the kind of person who eats bread with almost anything. I thought I’d have to say goodbye to boiled eggs, for example. But then I realized they taste just as good when the bread is replaced with some Gouda cheese cubes. It may sound odd, but it’s delicious.

The first time I went gluten-free grocery shopping I didn’t know what to buy and I went home with nothing but a box of Feta cheese. But, as I later found out, the only problem was that I wasn’t looking for the right things.

Egypt does have gluten-free products. I found a chocolate-flavored Chex Mix cereal —yes, cereal — made with corn instead of wheat with the mighty words ‘Gluten Free’ written on the box. The cereal tasted heavenly, and they offer a honey variety as well. So that was breakfast solved for a while.

Come lunch time, one would think there's be nothing more Celiac-friendly than a salad. But many salad dressings actually do contain gluten, so I had to read labels very carefully. The good news is, they do make gluten-free salad dressings you can buy at Alfa Market or Spinneys under the Wishbone brand. They're the next best thing after making your own dressings. The Classico brand also has a mushroom alfredo sauce, just make sure to use it to sauce some chicken, not pasta. SXC (corn cob)

For those midday snacks, I bought frozen cobs of sweet corn. After giving my friends a really hard time asking for the best recipe, I found out that I am so kitchen illiterate that I didn’t know corn cobs didn’t really need a recipe. I just needed to boil them with some salt added to the water (a tip I got from Rehaam Romero our food guru here in the magazine, check her blog My Yellow Brick Roux.

If you're a Maadi resident, or willing to make the trek, Fino Bakery on Road 213 bakes gluten-free bread. You'll have to order it in advance and in bulk, but for anyone finding it hard to give up bread, it'll probably be worth it. If you're really ambitious, check out any of the numerous food blogs dedicated to living gluten free and make your Celiac-friendly options. Check out Gluten Free Girl and the Chef for Shauna James and her chef husband's journey to live gluten free. You'll lean how to make gluten-free cookies, brownies, bread and even pancakes.

All in all, gluten-free options are all around. I've only named a few here, and I think with time I’ll discover more. Fighting Celiac disease doesn't have to mean you go hungry, on the contrary, if anything, I’m getting rid of my junk and fried food addictions. Celiac could be a serious disease, and it may lead to diabetes or even cancer if gluten is not cut out of the sufferer's diet. The disease was generally under-diagnosed, but more and more doctors are giving it attention now in the West. Hopefully, this will be the case in Egypt soon.

For more on where to find gluten-free food check out Kate Durham’s blog entry on Fighting the Food Culture