I am soooo excited!!  I feel like screaming it from the rooftops!!  General Mills will be introducing a gluten free Bisquick AND Hamburger Helper!!

The Hamburger Helper will be available in three flavors; Chicken Fried Rice, Cheesy Hashbrowns and Beef Fried Rice. They will be rolling out the new products this summer.  The Hamburger Helper will be around June and Bisquick in later summer.  So PLEASE…remember to check the ingredients!!!

General Mills will be test driving their Hamburger Helper at the Celiac Disease Foundation Annual Education Conference, so if you get to go to the conference…please check it out and let us all know how was!  I’m sure it will be great!!!

Ok, so I just read an article, on JSONLINE, an interview that was done with Stefano Guandalini, founder and medical director of the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center and Carol M. Shilson, executive director of the center.  Here are some of the bullet points:

• Celiac disease is found in 1 in 133 people that are “healthy”
• If you have a first degree relative (parent/child/sibling) it rises to 1 in 22
• If you have a second degree relative (aunt/uncle/cousin) it rises to 1 in 39
• In African Americans and Asian American it is 1/236
• 3 million Americans have celiac disease
• 60% children and 41% adults have no symptoms (in 1 study)
• Celiac and type 1 diabetes often go hand in hand.  There is a 8-10% overlap and some research suggests that untreated celiac disease may cause the diabetes
• Most celiac are intolerant of milk products, but after the intestines heal, can go back to to the milk

In this article, they hit on the topic that they don’t believe that people should self diagnose this disease.  Their reasons are quite simple…there would be no “scientific data” to say that you definitely have the disease and if you put yourself on a gluten free diet you would not be able to get that scientific data, as  you need the gluten in your system for the tests to come out accurate. They also tell you that it takes someone, with symptoms, 4 years to get diagnosed!  4 YEARS!!! I don’t know about you, but I would rather self diagnose myself than have to go through all that for another 4 years, just to have some “scientific data”.  Most people I talk to do not wait to get the test results…it takes too long!  You would think that the medical community would get it together and just start testing people for the disease; they automatically test every child in Europe….GEE!  WHAT AN IDEA!!  The problem with the tests though…they aren’t accurate!  So, if the testing isn’t accurate….and it’s going to take the doctor’s 4 years to diagnose me…and I can just cut out the gluten immediately and see if I feel better…what do you think I’m going to do???  I understand that scientists need people to get the testing so that they can have their data and so we can get more information about the disease…but maybe they should start putting some more pressure on the medical community to start testing people faster and get better testing (I know they are working on it).

Ok….so why does the FDA NOT require medication to have a notification if  it has gluten or not?  They are really slacking here!  They require that it be printed on the food nutrition label for wheat, gluten and other allergies…so how is it different for medication???  Does the FDA not realize that people can be allergic to medications too?  I, personally, am really “sick and tired” of being given a prescription and either becoming sick because of it and/or having to go through phone call after phone call to try and find out if there is gluten in the medication.  Not to mention that most of the people that you get on the phone don’t even know what gluten is, so they can’t giveyou a true answer.

There are some sites out there that have a list of the medications that they have found to be gluten free, which I have links to below.  The only problem with this though, is that it depends on the manufacturer and unless you always keep up with each individual medication, it may not always be right.  Manufacturers change their inactive ingredients and we wouldn’t know whether they did or not….until we get sick!  Plus, with medications, you may not realize that your getting gluten until a week or so down the road.  Some people assume that its a “side effect” and try to continue to take the medications and then some people may not have any symptoms show up for a few weeks…meanwhile…the whole time you have been getting “glutenized”…as I like to say.

So how do you know if it has gluten?  Good question!  Problem with this question is that the only people who truly know the answer is the guy who came up with the drug!  Most of the pharmaceutical companies don’t even know when you call, because they don’t know about the raw materials that they receive from their outside suppliers. Most pharmacists are great, but most of the time, they don’t know if it has gluten either.

You can look on the package insert or online at their “inactive ingredients”, but most of the time your not going to know what your looking at and either is the pharmacist. To start with, any starch ingredient (i.e “pregelatinized starch” or “sodium starch glycolate”) that is not labeled  as coming from a gluten-free source, for example, corn, potato, tapioca, should be avoided.  Also, other inactive ingredients that should be avoided are dextrates, dextrins, dextri-maltose, and maltodextrin.

Best thing to do is to first become best friends with your pharmacist.  They can be a real help and can sometimes make phone calls to the manufacturers for you and get information that you couldn’t.  You also want to remind your doctor when he is prescribing the medication, in case he wants to write you a second prescription, in case the first one has gluten in it.  Be ready to make lots of phone calls and try to keep your cool…I know…easier said than done!  You will be making phone calls to the manufacturers and possibly your health insurance companies, as the insurance companies may not want to pay for the gluten free prescription, because it’s usually cheaper for them for you to get the one with the gluten.  Remember to always keep up to date on the ingredients of your medications, as the manufacturer will change the ingredients, just like food items, and you won’t realize it.  And last but not least, if you are going in for any testing, where they require a contrast material, call and check ahead of time, to make sure that the dye doesn’t have any gluten.

The FDA really needs to get on the ball with this and start making the manufactures list whether there is gluten in the medications or not….as well as any other allergy, that may be in there.  If they make them list these items on food…then what is the difference in medication?

Here are some sites with information on gluten free medications:

http://www.glutenfreedrugs.com/

http://homepage.mac.com/sholland/celiac/GFmedlist.pdf

Again…I wish you all the best of the luck with this and maybe if we start making a stink about some of these issues…they will eventually get passed into law!

Went to Logan’s Roadhouse today and asked for the gluten free menu…after an argument with the hostess, someone FINALLY got it for me and brought it to me.  Not that this is anything new to us…we have all gone through this at some restaurant somewhere.  Anyway…I started looking at the different items and noticed that the menu said the burgers were gluten free, just ask for it without the bun.  So, I looked the burgers up on the regular menu and noticed that they had “Brewski onions”.  As I looked to see what these “Brewski onions” were…I noticed they were “beer” onions.  Now, we all know that we can not have beer…why? Because it has barley in it…and barley is gluten.  So, obviously, their menu is wrong, as these onions would not be very good for us.

I know these restaurants write these little statements at the bottom of their menus and their websites and everywhere else, so they don’t get sued, saying they don’t have a “gluten free” kitchen and can’t be held responsible if you get gluten…blah! blah! blah!  But, this really is starting to become a real pain in the booty!  I think that if a restaurant…ecpecially one as big as theirs, is going to take the time to draw up a gluten free menu…ATLEAST make sure the items on the menu are actually GLUTEN FREE!!!  What a concept!!

Anyway…this just a little note to let you all know about the menu and to remind you to ALWAYS double check the items on the gluten free menus.  Don’t just assume that if they have a gluten free menu…that the items are actually gluten free.

Good luck and best wishes!