If you are one of the many people in the world who like a drink with their meal or even go out at night for a drink and then finding gluten-free beer is very important for those with coeliac condition. There is no room for doubt over the gluten content, too much beer has an effect on most people producing headaches and upset stomachs and celiacs do not want to compound this by ingesting large amounts of gluten.
Although there are 1 in 500 people who are gluten intolerant there are few beers commercially available which are gluten-free. Breweries are commercial companies, targeting large market segments and catering for what they perceive as a small percentage of the population is not in their marketing plans. Having said this there is a growing awareness of the need for gluten-free beer and in 2006 in the UK CAMERA, the campaign for real ale, held its first international gluten-free beer Festival.
Many beer aficionados claim that beer can only be made with specific grains and unfortunately all of these contain gluten. Perhaps their expertise and advice is best placed to one side as we live in the real world and if you want a beer then you want a beer and shouldn’t let some pompous attitude stand in your way. This attitude can also cause problems as certain beers are claimed to be gluten-free because they have been filtered several times. Whilst filtration will remove many of the components which contain gluten this is not a 100% purification process and tiny amounts of gluten will remain to which you could be sensitive. The only solution is to take a beer which is guaranteed to be 100% gluten free.
Some people have overcome the problem by brewing their own gluten free beer. An important part of this process is to find gluten-free grains which are produced in a form for home brewing, this means that they are malted. This can be a problem as many grains are sold in the bird seed form which contain chemicals, and you need to contain a pure form, and information on malting grain is not commonly available.
Several smaller breweries have started to produce gluten-free beers, Green’s Discovery, Ramapo Valley Brewery, Bard’s Tale Beer, Fine Ale Club New France Beers, O’Brien Brewing, Hambleton Ales and in Italy Bi-Aglut to name some examples. Hopefully this represents really the beginning of a much larger number of breweries understanding the commercial opportunity in catering for people who need to maintain a gluten free diet.
Scoop – an internal memo from a chef to the kitchen staff about the gluten content of their meals.
Fried foods: i have been informed that some celiacs may be sensitive to foods that have been fried in the same deep fat that floured and breaded foods have been fried in. Many of our items are breaded using flour. For example, if french fries are cooked in the same shortening as breaded chicken, it is possible that minute particles of wheat flour may still be suspended in the oil and be deposited on the french fries. Unfortunately, this restaurant does not have a separate fryer for french fries. We use the same fryer for breaded foods. Therefore, we do not recommend eating fried items at this café.
Griddled foods food that is sauteed on the griddle (like breakfast potatoes) may pick up tiny grains of flour from pancakes that have been cooked on the same griddle. Please check with your doctor on this, as sensitivity varies from person to person. We can have griddled foods prepared singularly in a saute pan and get the same relative cooking effect. Please ask if concerned about crossover contamination.
Appetizers:
Fresh vegetable quesadillas – order them made with corn tortillas, without chipotle sauce. The fresh salsa is ok.
Salads:
A note on dressings: our mayonnaise contains “vinegar” as an ingredient but does not specify what type of vinegar it’s distilled from. Also, we use ketchup in some salad dressings (heinz and hunt’s) and mustard (french’s and grey poupon) which both contain “vinegar” on their labels, without further Specifying.
Lemon wedges and bottles of oil & vinegar are available, or you may bring your own dressing. This restaurant nonfat sweet & sour french dressing will be ok, as long as you can eat ketchup. Our other dressings may contain grain vinegar, soy sauce, worcestershire sauce and/or caramel coloring. Ranch dressing is very bad, it has hvp and yeast extract, so avoid this.
Cobb salad – ok (see note on bacon, in breakfast section) order without dressing
Zesty tostada chicken salad – ok, order without ranch dressing and without chipoltle sauce.
Chicken and fruit – ok, request broiled chicken
Salads are accompanied by a muffin or bread. You can order corn tortillas instead.
After you have been diagnosed with Coeliac condition you may wonder how you can eat gluten free and how much of a change to your normal habits this will be.
Gluten is a sticky protein that is found in a number of common grains such as wheat, oats, rye and barley and as such seems all pervasive appearing directly in many meals or indirectly by way of the sauce. Gluten appears in many food items and some places it occurs may surprise you.
Imagine trying to eat gluten free when you are not aware that if he coating on oven chips contains gluten! Beer is made from barley and hence is full of the substance and gluten free chicken or pork succumbs to the gluten invasion when coated in bread crumbs.
Notwithstanding the hidden nature of gluten it is possible to eat gluten free with just a small amount of care. The first thing you will need to do is to get into the habit of reading food labels. Many foods these days are labeled as “gluten-free” and this is a good start although you should note that the international standard for gluten-free products does not guarantee 100% abstinence of gluten. The standard is defined in the Codex Alimentarius and this defines a measure of less than and 200 ppm of gluten in the food product to be reviewed. Fortunately this is low enough to avoid creating problems for Celiacs unless they are hyper sensitive to gluten in which case they need to make special arrangements for their foodstuffs.
If we focus on what you can eat as gluten-free there are many alternative cereals and grains including rice, tapioca, sago, millet, maize, quinoa, buckwheat and sorghum. In addition the staples of the typical meal are gluten-free, that is to say milk, cheese, meat and common fruit and vegetables.
If you want to eat gluten-free cakes or bread then they will need to be made from a gluten-free flour such as corn, potato, rice, tapioca, maize, gram, sorghum, soya, chickpea and chestnut.
For a drink all fruit derivatives herbal and infusions will be gluten-free as is plain old tea and coffee with milk and sugar.
The list of foods to eat gluten-free is extensive and we could go on for many column inches although that will be subject to a separate article. From reading the list above you will come to realise that eating gluten-free is not such a variation from the normal and, with the exception of the substitution of some alternative grains and flours, these foodstuffs are those eaten by most people on the planet.