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Many consumers are trying gluten-free products without professional medical advice, she says. “People hear about it and self-diagnose. If it works for them, they stick with it.”
But a gluten-free diet is not inherently a healthful one. Some products are no more healthful than “your classic processed foods,” Dennis says. “They’re adding salt and fat to make up for the mouth feel and texture of gluten, and they’re lower in minerals and fiber.”
Leslie Cerier, author of Gluten-Free Recipes for the Conscious Cook, suggests people branch out to grains such as amaranth, new spices and lots of produce.
For breakfast, “think beyond toast. You can have a variety of different porridges with millet or rolled oats, or quinoa. Top with coconut milk or yogurt, maple syrup,” she says.
Kidd cooks with lots of polenta, made from corn, and quinoa. She turns scrambled eggs into crepes and makes the naturally gluten-free French flatbread called socca.
Eating out can be a challenge, and Kidd says restaurant kitchens don’t always know what to do: Cooks will put gluten-free pasta into the same water they use for wheat pasta, for instance. At home, Kidd returns to the same restaurants; when she travels, she carries bags of gluten-free flour that she gives chefs for her meal. “In the beginning, I was very uncomfortable at restaurants, but if you don’t stand up for yourself once and you get really sick, then you know.”
Even the vaunted French Laundry in the California Wine Country has heard the gluten-free call, and chef Thomas Keller asked his research and development chef, Lena Kwak, to find a solution. After a lot of trial and error to replicate the complex role of flour in baking, the result was Cup4Cup, a gluten-free mix now available in stores.
And there’s hope for beer drinkers who want to avoid gluten.
New Planet, one of several gluten-free beer makers, uses sorghum to replace barley and is coming out with a brown ale in August. Omission beer, which uses traditional barley but removes the gluten after brewing, came on the market a year ago.
“Being able to sit down with someone and have them want to drink the same beer I’m drinking is really fun,” says Terry Michaelson, chief executive of Omission, who has celiac disease. “I’m beginning to understand how important beer is to people and understand the passion gluten-free consumers have when they learn, wow, I can drink this. It’s a really fun experience.”
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