Beer allergy and gluten-free diet :-S

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Hi! Yesterday I drank about 13 or 16 beers and today I'm experimenting nasal congestion (which has always been my main allergic reaction) but I've also realized that lately when I drink beer this always happens the next day (I don't know if this has always happened), so I decided to do a little research on beer allergies, turns out it does exist, and according to my mom, when I was a kid I had wheat allergies (among many others like, lactose, dogs, etc.), however as I grew these allergies, although not completely, have faded in a way that now only excessive exposure triggers them, ex. eating 1 liter of ice cream, so I guess >this could explain the beer allergies.

Also, before I knew I had asperger, I had this girlfriend who noticed that when I had a lot of wheat in one day I would become particularly annoying, and from what I've read this gluten can affect aspies.

So anyway, could anybody offer me any guidance on starting a gluten-free diet? A copy of your nutritional regime would be ideal but any info regarding this would be useful.

Thanks

If you have a health food store that can substitute other grains for wheat it'd be beneficial. I don't find a gluten-free diet difficult at all. For baking you can use garbanzo bean flour, rice flour... you can use gluten-free oats and quinoa. Sorghum. Corn.

Read, read, read. There's so much hidden gluten and wheat in foods. I think the only reason why I find it easy is because I eat the same foods over and over and always have, they only had to be modified without wheat. If you ate out a lot you might have a problem.

What I eat:

Fresh red muscle meat; beef, lamb, duck, pork, etc and fish, ( all high in zinc, especially the meat, to compensate for all the years ( 5-7 ) of near-alcoholism, periods of wholegrain cereal diet, vegetarianism, and gluten-consumption in general, which impaired my ability to absorb zinc or flushed it out of the body )

Also eggs, and butter, cheese, yoghurt, cream, etc on and off.

Avocadoes, raw carrots, cucumber, other fresh unprocessed vegetables. Coffee! :lol

You can also eat all nuts and seeds, all fruit, ( fresh and unprocessed ), all ( fresh plain ) vegetables including broccoli, mushrooms, lettuce, parsley, tomato, potatoes, onion, garlic, chives, coriander and other herbs and you can also eat rice, ( and corn/maize too if you want to, though quite a lot of people who go gf discover that corn isn't ideal either ).

And you can also eat all beans, lentils, chickpeas, etc ( but be careful of ones in sauces ). There is also buckwheat, millet, tapioca, and various other rather obscure and odd grains/starchy carbos if you want greater variety in those.

Rice and potato are probably the safest and cheapest and simplest/least processed replacement starchy carbohydrates, and are great with vegetables, pulses, and salads.

Avoid processed/prepared foods which very often contain virtually invisible gluten in the form of: wheat dextrose, hydrolysed vegetable protein, malt, maltodextrin, modified starch, etc, including the "glue" which holds spices/flavourings onto crisps and corn chips.

Foods which contain virtually invisible gluten include:
Soya sauce ( swop for tamari, if you want to carry on eating soya )
Most [i]flavoured[/i] salty snacks, and most salty snacks are probably contaminated to some degree
Vinegar ( malt and general "spirit vinegars" )
Cornflakes ( malt and contamination )
A lot of sausages, many "patés", and most bacon, ham, and other cured meats ( wheat dextrose )
Salad dressings ( the vinegar but also modified starch thickeners, etc )
Mustard may
Certain brands and flavours of icecream
Deep-fried/"battered"/breaded and otherwise "coated" meat and fish

Good luck. :)

Useful site:

GF forum: http://www.glutenfreeandbeyond.org/forum/ and its sister database website: http://sites.google.com/site/jccglutenfree/
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I could have sworn that said bear allergy. I thought to myself, how in the heck did he know he was allergic to bears!? And whats that have to do with gluten?

PS. The main thing is to keep it simple, fresh, unprocessed.

Beware "oven fries/chips" because there is often wheat dextrose and stuff in them, and chocolate too is often contaminated; some packets will actually say "traces of gluten". Don't eat chips/fries which are fried in the same oil as breaded or battered foods. "Dry Roasted" peanuts are coated in wheat among other things. Nougats and similar sweets use flour to stop them sticking together, and even so called "rice paper" may have wheat in I found out recently. Beware scrambled eggs in some fast-food restaurants; some add flour for "fluffiness"!

But a steak, or a fried egg, or a piece of fried/grilled fish, plus undressed salad, or a chunk/selection of cheese, or a handful of nuts, or a plate of rice with a sauce whose ingredients you can check, ( "biryanis", rice dishes in indian restaurants, may be ok, depending on whether they use soya sauce in them or not ), or a plain baked potato to which you personally add salt and butter/cream or whatever, are very safe foods to eat out/in restaurants. Fresh fruit is always ok ( but some dried fruit may have been "dusted" in flour ).
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