029: The Ultimate Restaurant Guide, A Sweet Holiday Pizza and The True Risk of Cross Contamination

November 2023

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Featured Article

Gluten Free Dining Guide: 7 Tips for Celiac Safe Restaurant Meals

Have you been invited out to dinner and you’re wondering if you can safely eat out at a restaurant?  You’re not alone. 

Gluten-free restaurant dining can be a nerve-wracking experience, and for this reason, many people with celiac disease never eat outside their own home. But is that any way to live? Is eating out at a restaurant with friends and family worth the risk?

The seven essential tips in my new Gluten Free Dining Guide will help you to put the risk in perspective and give you a good solid strategy for dining out safely with celiac disease.

Go here for my Gluten Free Restaurant Dining Guide.

Featured Recipe

Sweet and Decadent Gluten Free Pear Crumble Dessert Pizza

The holidays are coming and I thought you might be looking for something fun and different to offer for dessert.

This pizza is like nothing you’ve ever tasted before. It’s sweet and decadent. It looks appetizingly beautiful and will make you holiday dessert table shine.

The base is sweet Arborio rice. That is the same rice that’s used to make risotto, so just imagine the creamy texture.

The filling is ripe sweet pears with sugar and cinnamon, and the whole thing is topped off with a classic crumble topping. Is your mouth watering yet?

Go here for my recipe for my Sweet and Decadent Gluten Free Pear Crumble Pizza.

Let me know how you like it in the FB Group.

News From the Scientific Community

Is Cross Contamination in the Kitchen Really That Big of a Deal?

It’s the big thing that we worry about, isn’t it?

For years we’ve been advised to be careful in the kitchen. Have a separate toaster, replace wooden and plastic utensils, use a separate colander for gluten free pasta. I’ve even written about this myself, citing reputable sources in the celiac community.

But has anyone ever tested to see if shared appliances and utensils is really a problem for people with celiac disease? After all, it might be important to really understand the risk. Worrying about and avoiding cross contamination causes a lot of anxiety, extra work and extra expense in our lives. It even causes some of us to miss out on important social occasions.

Would you be surprised to find out that we may be worrying ourselves sick for no reason? I was.

In two separate studies done in 2018 and 2019, researchers tested the following scenarios:

• toasting gluten free bread in a toaster used for regular bread

• cutting bread and cupcakes used to cut regular cupcakes

• using a wooden spoon in gluten pasta then gluten free pasta

• cleaning utensils with a gluten contaminated cloth

• draining gluten pasta in a colander, rinsing the colander and then using it for gluten free pasta

• using a pasta ladle in gluten pasta then gluten free pasta

• cooking gluten free pasta in water that was used for regular pasta

Is reading that list making your stomach churn just a little? It does for me. However, with all those tests, the findings were quite surprising. In the first six of those seven scenarios, the amount of gluten was below the 20 ppm level considered safe for celiac patients. The gluten free pasta that was cooked in water used to cook gluten pasta did test above 20 ppm, but rinsing the pasta under running water for 30 seconds took the level down to under 20 ppm.

What Does This Mean for Those of Us with Celiac Disease?

Do we go nuts and forget everything we’ve learned? Do we throw caution to the wind?

I don’t think so. For me, reasonable precautions still make sense. Why add gluten to your life when a few simple precautions can help you avoid it. But I do think it means we can relax a little. Cross contamination in a kitchen is possible, but these studies show that may not be as big a risk as we once thought and maybe all the scaremongering is doing more harm than good.

The authors of the first study suggested that broad recommendations not be made based on their research and that more investigation is needed, but I think we can all take a breath and let our shoulders down a little.

If you’re interested, you can read the two studies here and here.

What I’m Reading

I’ve finished off Outlive, The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia. Watch the website for my review coming soon.

More Reading

Check out my reading list. It’s a roundup of all the food related books I’ve curated for you along with my reviews.

Book Reviews: Interesting and Informative Books on Celiac Disease and Healthy Eating

Do you have any suggestions for additions to our library? Let the community know here on our FB Group.

Coming Soon

If you follow me on Facebook, you know that I’ve just come back from an amazing 13 day Mediterranean cruise. I know many of you have wondered if you can cruise safely with celiac disease. I’ll share my experience in an upcoming article at naturallygluten-free.com

That’s All For This Month

I’d love to hear from you. Let me know what you’d like to see in the newsletter. Just drop me a line from my Contact Page .

Talk to you soon.

Patty

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Or on Pinterest at https://www.pinterest.ca/naturallyglutenfree/