Livin' La G-Free Vida: Why and How

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My best friend Sarah has been having health problems for the past year or two. She had constant stomach cramping and irregularity going to the bathroom. She was always tired and anxious and seemed to be continually gaining weight. After a barrage of tests for everything from PCOS to a uterine cancer, her doctor finally had her tested for allergies. Lo and behold, she’s intolerant to gluten.

Not being too familiar with the whole g-free revolution, I did a bit of research on what it means to be gluten intolerant. In the United States alone, 1 in every 133 people cannot properly digest gluten. Everyone from chain restaurants to grocery stores has gotten on the g-free train.

For those of us who aren’t necessarily intolerant to gluten, going g-free is a viable option to get healthy. The benefits of eliminating gluten from your diet include weight loss, less allergy sensitivities, regulated digestion, and stabilized energy levels.

In prepping for Sarah’s next visit, I did a bit of research on some common g-free substitutes. Here’s a sneak peek:

Grains: Grains that don’t contain gluten include rice, corn, oats, millet, amaranth and teff.

Flour: When it comes to baking, use flours made from chickpeas, lentils, tapioca, coconut, nuts or seeds.

Bread and Pasta: Consider subbing in rice cakes or brown rice tortillas in sandwiches. There is a large selection of pastas made from everything from brown rice to quinoa.

Mixes and Packages: From pancakes and waffles to brownies and cookies, health food stores carry any and every type of mix available and accessible for all your g-free needs.

If you’re body has no reaction whatsoever to gluten, consider yourself lucky. If you’ve noticed yourself feeling tired, gaseous, crampy, and irritable after a large meal, you might want to consider going g-free for a week. If nothing else, you might even drop a few pounds.

Edited by Alison Stanton

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