Durham's Gluten Free Network

On this beautiful end of May day, we wrap up Celiac Awareness Month (from last year) with gratitude and renewed courage.  Every year brings us closer to clarity on where gluten hides in our everyday foods.  Every year bring us closer to an answer for why Celiac disease itself is accelerating in our community.  Each voice raised in compassion toward those who have limited food choices brings us closer to dietary freedom and respect. I note with pride that our community cares for one another and protects our right to safe food even when it inconveniences our community businesses.  Let this year be the year we educate our local restaurants , the year we  protect all children from ridicule because they're "different."  Our freedoms are interlinked.  I will not be free to respectfully decline a cross-contaminated meal until every dieter of every sort is free to choose their food according to their preference or need. And let this be the year wh...

From Pexels by @Pixabay  Rice is one of  the most popular grains in the world. To those of us who need gluten free food, it's a substitute for gluten grains such as wheat, for many cooking purposes, and it's considered hypoallergenic.  In Asia it's a central part of the diet. In Gluten Free cooking and baking, it's usually well represented, and almost ubiquitous.  But it could also contain arsenic at harmful levels and so far, rice in the US isn't routinely tested for arsenic content. The gluten free community has already sounded the alarm about the possibility of arsenic in rice and how that problem is magnified in the Celiac community, where the most popular flour, wheat flour, is not used.  However, there isn't a lot of depth to many articles so I'm going to delve into this subject with gusto! First a quote from a different article :  " the Mayo Clinic looked directly at levels of arsenic in people with and without celiac disease who were f...

Time Out for a Daily Salad?  YES!😍 In the past few days, a study was published about "organoids" being used to learn more about Celiac Disease.  This is new, but not brand new, since organoids have been used to study Inflammatory Bowel Disease (a condition that's 1/5th as common as Celiac).  The technique has already given us new insight into Celiac, but has some limitations, so let's look more closely at it. What's an Organoid? An  organoid is like having a model of the gut (like you might see in a doctor's office) but it works better because it's made up of human tissue kept alive in a laboratory setting.  It can be used to learn more about a disease that affects human tissues like the epithelium of the gut.  Where is it from?  Biopsy tissue that's collected in routine tests might be grown in a lab, then placed in an organoid giving researchers a new way to study a disease. (Fans of Star Trek may be mildly amused by "matrigel...