I believe we need to increase awareness and understanding of children with Celiac Disease, especially in public environments like their schools.

My sister works in a child care facility, and one of the more disturbing trends I hear about is how so many employees and parents of non-Celiac children don’t appreciate the severity of Celiac Disease symptoms. It is almost as if children with Celiac Disease are a nuisance to them.

“Oh gosh, we have to make special pancakes for the Celiac child — woa is us!”

I understand why this happens; it’s a familiar phenomenon for anyone suffering from a relatively unknown health condition, and unfortunately it may even be a familiar phenomenon for those of us just dealing with the pubic in general. I prefer to focus on the best qualities of humanity, but I still can’t help but feel disturbed when I observe how often people simply act impatient and inconvenienced when they must slightly adjust their actions and behaviors for other human beings around them.

I’m writing this around that late year festive season, a season which is supposed to be one of caring and giving. Yet I can imagine all the heavy sighs and eye rolls from parents who feel inconvenienced because they’re politely asked to be careful how they distribute holiday treats with peanuts or gluten to a classroom of children.

Children With Celiac Disease

The shame of this is that it could be treated as an opportunity rather than an inconvenience. Children are still forming their tastes; this is a ripe opportunity to broaden their pallet and encourage them to eat a wider variety of healthy foods. Instead of thinking in terms of excluding one child from the others, why not make it a healthy and tasty learning experience for all the children in the class?

Why not try some of my tasty gluten-free bread recipes or gluten-free bread machine recipes?

I’m not saying I advocate imposing the gluten-free diet on all the other children simply because one child suffers from gluten allergy symptoms, but why not consider — at least every once in a while — celebrating the gluten-free diet and treating it like an opportunity for your children rather than a nuisance for your children.

With this article, Gluten Allergy Symptoms, I will attempt to clarify something I feel may confuse people researching Celiac Disease (or Celiac Sprue Disease) and Gluten Intolerance (or gluten enteropathy).

To be honest, the term gluten allergy symptoms itself creates confusion and I’m not fond of it. I titled this article this confusing term on purpose to draw those using it so I might educate them on why it isn’t the best term for this condition. And yet even as I wrote it, I’ve decided that “gluten allergy symptoms” may still have a purpose if we can get the health community to use it in a specific way and in a consistent manner.

The first aspect you must understand is that clinical Celiac Disease and even Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity (NCGS) is fundamentally different than an allergy in the traditional sense. Celiac disease isn’t a food allergy; it is an autoimmune disease. I explain this to some degree with the main article of this site, but because I receive an overwhelming number of emails targeting the phrase gluten allergy symptoms, I thought I better address the term more directly in its own article.

Wheat Allergy Symptoms

Wheat Allergy Symptoms

First, you should understand exactly how an allergic reaction to wheat occurs. It’s important for people to understand that an allergic reaction is completely different than the systemic reaction your body experiences over time with gluten intolerance.

A wheat allergy is the result of a histamine response. By itself, such an allergy doesn’t indicate Celiac Disease or gluten intolerance. An allergic reaction to wheat is more like the kind of allergy you might associate with allergies to pollen (hay fever) and pets (I’m sure you’ve known someone allergic to cats or dogs).

With such a histamine response, what’s happening is that while blood cells known as basophils and mast cells over-react to Immunoglobulin E. This causes an immediate response. Symptoms of wheat intolerance manifest themselves not unlike other allergic reactions you may recognize: hives, sneezing, runny nose, watery eyes, stomach discomfort and even pain.

But just because you eat something with wheat in it and you experience these symptoms does not specifically mean you suffer from gluten intolerance or Celiac Disease. This instead is a relatively simple food allergy.

One example how fundamentally different this can be from gluten intolerance is that often times people can be allergic to foods containing wheat but can do fine with other gluten-based foods, such as spelt or barley.

It is vital that you understand how this is NOT the case for people who are truly gluten intolerant. Spelt and barley are just as bad for you as wheat if you are truly gluten intolerant and not just allergic to wheat.

Gluten Intolerance Symptoms

Gluten intolerance and celiac disease are in fact more complicated, more subtle and yet even more serious over the long term.

(Note: I don’t mean to marginalize the seriousness of allergic reactions. However, it is imperative for people to appreciate how real gluten intolerance has long-term consequences far more serious than temporary hives or stomach pain.)

Celiac Disease, and the formal definition of gluten intolerance, is when you have overly strong antibodies reacting to the proteins in gluten (giadin and glutenin). These overreacting antibodies lash out at your intestinal enomysium. For a more detailed definition, please see my main article: Gluten Intolerance Symptoms

If that last paragraph looked like a Martian language to you, don’t worry. I’ll try to explain it a little more simply. What basically happens here is that when you eat a gluten-containing food, your body overreacts to it and that overreaction affects certain innocent bystanders of your intestines: villi.

These villi, which are tiny hairs or tiny fingers along the inner lining of your intestines, perform the vital role of grabbing nutrition from your food as it passes through your small intestine.?

Gluten Intolerance and Intestinal Villi

Over time, villous atrophy occurs. What this means is that your body’s overreaction to gluten slowly wears down and kills off the villi, making your small intestine less capable of digesting all foods — not just gluten-containing foods. This malabsorption has serious and far-reaching consequences.

Real gluten intolerance will lead to vitamin deficiencies and nourishment deficiencies in your nervous system, your brain, bones and other organs (especially your liver).

This in turn may lead to a whole array of health problems, including severe malnutrition, autism and current studies may indicate even cancer. Children with gluten intolerance or Celiac Disease frequently suffer from a failure to thrive and grow.

Gluten Allergy Symptoms: Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity

To make this matter all more confusing, you can experience gluten intolerance but still not test positive for Celiac disease. There is still much to learn about this new subset of Celiac Disease, but the vital part is that you can be gluten intolerant yet test negative for Celiac Disease.

Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity (NCGS) or Gluten Related Disease (GRD) may ultimate prove to be Celiac Disease once better forms of diagnosis are discovered, but for now you it exists as its own diagnosis and phenomenon. Please not that both Celiac Disease and Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity should be treated the same: Both require you completely eliminate all traces of gluten from your diet.

Gluten Allergy Symptoms

It’s possible that NCGS is the most accurate single health condition for the phrase gluten allergy symptoms, as it is neither a wheat allergy nor a formal, clinical diagnosis of Celiac Disease. I developed this concept even as I wrote this article.

So what are gluten allergy symptoms anyway? If you are experiencing an allergic reaction to wheat, the symptoms will likely manifest themselves through gluten allergy hives or gluten allergy rashes. You might also experience gluten allergy bloating. However, symptoms like fatigue and extended irritable bowel syndrome symptoms typically are more likely to indicate a gluten intolerance. More severe skin reactions, like Dermatitis herpetiformis, can indicate Celiac disease as well.

Usage of the Phrase “Gluten Allergy Symptoms” Online

However, please note that this is just my own attempt to find a use for the overly used and misused term. When you are researching wheat allergies and gluten intolerance, please note that in most cases you will likely see the phrase gluten allergy symptoms used by sources which you shouldn’t entirely trust as knowledgeable sources.

In fact, when I Googled the exact phrase “gluten allergy symptoms,” several of the sites that returned at the top of the results provided contradictions and even serious misinformation. In those cases I suggest you double-check with reputable sites such as the Mayo Clinic and or WebMD before you accept their suggestions or conclusions.

Please take gluten intolerance very seriously. Begin eliminating gluten entirely from your diet immediately and be vigilant. To help you get started I have a Gluten Free Pantry, which helps you to understand how to replace gluten in your everyday meals and recipes. To help allay your fears of never eating good bread again, I have two recipe pages: Gluten Free Bread Recipes and Gluten Free Bread Machine Bread Recipes.

For a more thorough and scientific look at the Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity phenomenon, try Dr. Scott Lewey’s excellent article on Celiac.com:

Gluten Sensitivity: A Gastroenterologist’s Personal Journey Down the Gluten Rabbit Hole

And here’s a short video of a well-known doctor and immunologist describing the difference between a wheat allergy and Celiac Disease (which should help you understand why I’m not fond of the phrase gluten allergy symptoms):

I hope this helps you better understand gluten allergy symptoms and thank you for reading Gluten Intolerance Symptoms.

While the claim made in the title of my post may seem a bit bold, I do have a serious point about gluten intolerance symptoms, whether they derive from celiac disease (coeliac disease) or non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS).

Believe or not, there is some truth to the statement in this gluten blog post’s title. While we know celiac disease can easily lead to constipation if not treated through a rigorous gluten-elimination diet, many studies now seem to indicate that celiac disease can also lead to depression. And furthermore, this celiac constipation may be what leads to this kind of celiac depression.

How exactly? Well that part isn’t too clear just yet. I call the phenomenon celiac depression, but its sources could be from celiac disease itself, malnutrition resulting from malabsorption from celiac disease or gluten intolerance, or perhaps just the stress and anxiety many face initially while adapting to a gluten-free lifestyle.

(By “just the stress” I don’t mean to belittle the anxiety. Believe me, I understand what many of you are going through… but please! Hold out hope! It gets better — it really does!)

Read more about this phenomenon on my site’s new article: Celiac Depression. Again, some of this information is theoretical, but there’s a lot about gluten intolerance and celiac sprue disease that we don’t yet fully understand.

In many cases, it seems the malnutrition angle appears to be the most substantial and established. And what happens before you start suffering this malnutrition from gluten intolerance symptoms?

Yes, celiac disease constipation. So you can see how my cheeky post title actually represents a grain of truth (pun intended).

I hope these new articles I’ve added on celiac disease constipation and celiac depression encourage you to take your gluten elimination diet seriously.

Thank you for visiting Gluten Intolerance Symptoms and if you haven’t already, please stay a while and have a look around. People seem to really love my Gluten Free Pantry and bread recipes, so check ‘em out!

Celiac Disease (or Coeliac Disease) and gluten intolerance create such fundamental changes in our biology and physiology that one can’t help but wonder how far these effects reach.

Since I began my site and began more exhaustive research into gluten intolerance, I’ve met many people who struggle with the psychological weight of celiac disease and conforming to such a strict diet. So naturally this led me to research the association of celiac disease and depression. Does such a thing as a celiac depression really exist? Do celiac and depression go hand and hand?

Depression — as well as some other mood and behavioral troubles — may occasionally be related to gluten intolerance symptoms. In several studies, children and grownups with celiac sprue disease experienced greater rates of clinical depression than patients without celiac disease. Occasionally these surveys were comprised of subjects with untreated celiac sprue (so they were still consuming gluten in their diet).

With other cases, even as the research specifically concerned celiac subjects on gluten-free diets, they still experienced sharper rates of clinical depression compared with non-celiac subjects. This seems to indicate some kind of celiac disease depression.

But the larger question becomes… does a gluten-free diet help people suffering from depression? How related, clinically, are a gluten-free diet and depression?

If the patient’s clinical depression is associated with malabsorption of nutrients, than being gluten-free may facilitate treatment, as the bowels heal and nutrient assimilation increases.

A few researchers think that malabsorption may interfere with the body’s managing of the neurotransmitters which govern mood. Particularly, malabsorption-related insufficiencies of tryptophan seem to add to depressive disorder within coeliac subjects. Tryptophan is essential for the body’s output of serotonin, which is the primary neurotransmitter required for mood regulation as well as anxiety tolerance.

In untreated celiac subjects — as well as in a few celiac subjects on gluten-free diets — being vitamin B6 insufficient may also exhibit a role within clinical depression. In a recent Scandinavian study, for instance, subjects with celiac disease as well as clinical depression described no improvement in their clinical depression after a year on the gluten-free diet. After six months of vitamin B6 treatment, however, their depressive symptoms had distinctly improved.

Additional side effects from malabsorption may induce symptoms which may have been misidentified as clinical depression. For instance, an insufficiency of folic acid ascribable to malabsorption may induce weariness, indifference as well as absent mindedness. Iron deficiency, with or without anemia, may provoke feelings of fatigue as well.

In one study of individuals aged twelve to sixteen with gluten intolerance in the Republic of Finland, children who were depressed prior to subscribing to a gluten-free diet had specific hormonal biochemical imbalances affiliated with clinical depression. After 3 months on a gluten-free diet, these same young teenagers had restored hormone biochemistries while exhibiting a substantial decrease in psychiatric symptoms.

A gluten-free diet isn’t always the best reparation for clinical depression, nonetheless, for reasons which are occasionally understood yet occasionally unknown. At least two separate Italian studies have ascribed greater rates of clinical depression in gluten-free celiac subjects to difficulties in adapting to the disease as well as the diet. Celiac patients within these studies were to a greater extent anxious because they sensed their quality of life had been challenged and made more difficult.

The psychological root, or the depression cause in this case isn’t directly a result of the celiac disease but an indirect result of facing the lifestyle changes and restrictions required by celiac disease.

I believe these are the individuals whom I’ve met the most.

In numerous additional published studies, including one from the Kingdom of Sweden observing more than 10,000 subjects with celiac disease, authors have discovered greater rates of clinical depression amidst gluten-free celiacs yet weren’t able to identify particular causes.

So you’ve read all these stats and figures and you’re still wondering… what does this all mean?

In short, we don’t know everything we can about celiac depression for certain just yet. While it seems likely celiac disease has the potential of invoking a more depressive state, researchers haven’t been able to narrow down exactly why this is the case. We can’t with certainty attribute it to celiac disease itself because it could be a second level side-effect of malabsorption. And furthermore we can’t yet define with certainty whether depression develops in celiac cases because of our biology or because of the increased difficulty of living with the perceived lifestyle and dietary restrictions of a gluten-free life.

So is there such a thing as a celiac depression? Apparently so, but we can’t quite identify why or how just yet.

This may not have been the clear conclusion you sought, but I hope it empowers you to appreciate how you must take a positive and proactive approach to your lifestyle or the lifestyle of your loved ones when you adapt to gluten-free living. Celiac depression is a real possibility as one of many celiac disease symptoms and it is better to be healthy and thoughtful about it then to pretend it can’t happen to you or your loved ones.

Thanks again for visiting Gluten Intolerance Symptoms and I hope this helped.

So you know you have gluten intolerance and you’re persevering celiac disease symptoms. What now?

The following gluten free guide literally changed my life. I urge you to give it a try and learn what you can from it. I don’t know why more people don’t try it as it features a guarantee that is like having your own personal expert for 8 weeks… for free!

It is entitled The Essential Gluten Free Guide and it is exactly what it says it is: it is the essential guide to adapting to a gluten-free lifestyle with celiac disease:

Order Here: The Essential Gluten Free Guide

Peter Tremayne — the sort of hard-working and caring individual you really want to root for — has assembled some great research and writing into a single comprehensive guide to Gluten Free living:

The Essential Gluten Free Guide

I love how he’s chosen electronic distribution. This means several cool things:

1. You can pay for it and read it right away without having to pay for shipping or waiting for it to land on your doorstep.
2. Peter offers a lifetime of free updates and enhancements, something he could only do with an ebook. Think about it: if you bought something like this on Amazon, the author would inevitably publish a new version which you’d have to pay for all over again. Not with THIS book!
3. As long as you’re even remotely comfortable with computers, you can carry and transfer this book anywhere instantly!
4. You can print as much or as little of this book as you need, or even print as many copies as you might need.

You’ll learn to better understand the cause of celiac disease, celiac disease treatment and when you’re reading it in a better mood, you’ll find delicious gluten free bread mix recipes.

On top of all that, Peter offers a generous 8-week, no-questions-asked money-back guarantee. So it’s just like having an 8-week free trial.

Since this is a cheap book you can instantly return if you don’t like, it sure seems like something most of you should at least consider. In fact, since I really want people to try it, I’ll explain exactly how to get your refund if you don’t find the book worth your money.

After you purchase it, you have a 8 full weeks to try it. If you don’t like it just go to Clickbank’s customer service screen (which you can find right here) and request your refund (select “I would like to request a refund” from the “Subject of Request” drop-down menu).

You’re money will be back on your credit card within 24 hours, no questions asked. Clickbank features the most reliable and trusted digital distribution service on the Web and you don’t even have to bother contacting the author or manufacturer to get your refund.

So let Peter help you take control of your gluten intolerance and get back to enjoying your life with his top notch gluten free guide:

The Essential Gluten Free Guide

I really hope this helps and if you find it in anyway disappointing, go get your money back and then let me know what it didn’t provide you so I can try to provide those missing elements with my site. Heck, it even includes a robust gluten free restaurant guide so you can dine out with confidence!

Thanks again for visiting Gluten Intolerance Symptoms and I hope your visit has been a positive experience.

Don’t let a celiac disease diagnosis get you down!

The Essential Gluten Free Guide

In this section of Gluten Intolerance Symptoms, I will address the symptoms and treatments for celiac disease constipation.

One of the most common symptoms of gluten intolerance and celiac disease is constipation (along with celiac disease bloating). Before we address constipation directly, you need to understand why celiac disease causes you to become constipated. Gluten intolerance symptoms are among the most serious constipation causes.

You also should understand why exactly it isn’t good for you to be constipated (besides that it can be unpleasant). Celiac disease constipation is a serious issue which you should take the time to understand.

While we don’t have a real clear and undisputed understanding of the causes of celiac disease, we do now better understand the changes your body experiences as a result of being or becoming a coeliac patient.

In celiac disease (sometimes spelled coeliac disease), gluten catalyzes your immune system to produce certain unusual antibodies. These antibodies then attack the lining of your small intestine. This lining absorbs nutrients and vitamins from food as it is digested and passes through your bowel.

The lining of your small intestine contains villi, which are like little fingers reaching out from the walls of your bowel. They’re so tiny they can only be seen under a microscope. They densely populate the lining of your small bowel so that they create a large surface area over which digesting food moves. As food moves across this surface area the villi help grab and absorb vitamins and minerals into your blood stream.

When the antibodies created by gluten attack these villi, the villi slowly wear down over time, often eventually being completely destroyed.

As the villi are reduced or destroyed, the food slides through your gut less digested and with far fewer of the nutrients absorbed.

The further the food proceeds, the more the small intestine expects the food to be digested and the nutrients absorbed. When the parts of your bowel expecting the food to be digested into a certain state tries to process this food, this later area of your small intestines instead either pass it completely without further digesting or just absorbs what little it can — often only the moisture and water.

This leads to dark, firm stools and eventually to celiac disease constipation.

Constipation isn’t just gut pain, fewer bowel movements or the many other related symptoms such as bloating and constipation. Your experiencing constipation symptoms indicates a dysfunction in your body’s ability to digest nutrients and eliminate toxins.

Not unlike bad traffic, celiac disease constipation represents slow transit time and thus leads to back-ups. When your colon becomes backed up, then eventually your small intestine will become backed-up. This then leads to delayed gastric emptying in your stomach. (Now you may understand why some people experience reflux and heartburn when they are constipated.)

This gastric delay reduces absorption of nutrients at all points in the digestive system. This keeps toxins your body normally eliminates in your system for a longer period, taxing your immune system even further as some of these toxins may be reabsorbed.

So how do you address celiac disease constipation?

The most important step is to completely eliminate gluten from your diet. This means no more wheat, rye or barley or foods that might contain ingredients derived from wheat, rye or barley. You should also avoid oats. While oats aren’t inherently bad for celiac disease, they are commonly farmed and processed with gluten-containing grains. Please see my gluten free pantry to help you get started.

However, this is a long-term solution, and even after remaining strictly gluten-free for a long time, you still may suffer some permanent celiac disease symptoms from going undiagnosed for many years. So how do we more rapidly address constipation?

My favorite approach to celiac disease constipation, and a general natural remedy for constipation which has helped many people, involves combining the following series of constipation treatments:

1. Every morning before you eat anything else, drink a tall glass of warm water with a natural fiber supplement, such as one which uses psyllium. You can take it either as a powder mixed in with the water or a pill, whichever you prefer.
2. With this fiber or right after consuming it, I strongly suggest a supplement (or more than one supplement if you can’t find a single one with these in it) containing slippery elm bark, flax seed and L-Glutamine (often listed as just glutamine).
3. At any point in the day, take a probiotic supplement which comes in an enteric covered capsule or pearl. A quality probiotic contains multiple strains of friendly bacteria (such as lactobacillus acidophilus, which is used in most yogurts). The enteric coating protects the friendly bacteria from your stomach so that it is not killed too early in your digestive tract. This helps it reach and flourish within your small intestine. I really like Nature’s Way Reuteri pearls.
4. Take a flax oil supplement in the later part of the day. This is different than taking a ground seed or a supplement with flax in it. You need the lubricating quality of a flax oil supplement.
5. Be sure to drink plenty of water throughout the day — soda-pop, coffee and alcoholic beverages do NOT count. You REALLY need to increase your water intake if you’re constipated.
6. You knew this one was coming: you really need to get regular exercise every single day. This can mean different things to different people so I won’t go into detail here, but at least try to get in a well-paced walk every single day.

If you do these every day for a week to two weeks, you should start to experience a significant improvement in your regularity and comfort. Constipation from Celiac Disease can be tough, so I urge you to remain discipline and motivated.

While this list may appear intimidating at first, with some focus and a positive attitude you can make these points part of your daily routine. And before you know it — as long you’re being smart and disciplined with your gluten-free diet — you’ll find yourself eliminating celiac disease constipation and enjoying both the greater comfort of regularity and the benefits of greater nutritional absorption.

Thank you for reading and I really hope this helps. Please visit Gluten Intolerance Symptoms regularly as I add and refine my website during the coming months.

Anyone with gluten intolerance symptoms should get to know these gluten free pantry essentials, and find their favorite gluten free flour blends. Learning the ins and outs of these gluten free substitutes can bring baking back to life for those diagnosed with celiac disease or gluten intolerance. This can also help take the guesswork out of your shopping search.

I’ll begin with a list of common wheat flour alternatives, then explain key ingredients used for gluten substitution with these flour alternatives, then move on to detail several great recipes for gluten free flour blends. If you like, you can skip down to the recipes by clicking here.

If you’re looking for a quick, pre-made gluten-free flour mix, I strongly recommend this mix from Bob’s Red Mill:

Note that at Amazon you can buy this in bulk and get free shipping!

Bean flour
Bean flour is produced from pulverized dried or ripe beans. By using this flour you can increase nutritional value without adding fat. You can replace up to 1/4 the amount of wheat flour with bean flour.

Brown Rice Flour
Brown rice flour comes from unpolished brown rice. It has more food value than white rice flour because it contains bran, the outer layers of the grain that contains more nutrients and fiber. Use it in breads, muffins, and cookies.

Corn Flour
Corn flour is milled from corn and can be blended with cornmeal to make cornbread or muffins. It is excellent for waffles or pancakes.

Cornmeal
Cornmeal is ground corn that comes from either yellow, white or blue cornmeal. This is often combined with flours for baking. It imparts a strong corn flavor that is delicious in pancakes, waffles, or simple white cakes.

Cornstarch
Cornstarch is a refined starch that comes from corn. It is mostly used as a clear thickening agent for puddings, fruit sauces and Asian cooking. It is also used in combination with other flours for baking.

Nut Flours
Nut flours are grated from oily nuts–most commonly almonds and hazelnuts–and are used instead of or in addition to wheat flour to produce more dry and flavorful pastries and cakes. Tortes are often made with nut flours. Just be sure the nut flours weren’t processed in a facility that also produces wheat flour — there could be cross contamination.

Potato Starch Flour
Potato starch flour is a gluten-free thickening agent that is perfect for cream-based soups and sauces. Mix a little with water first, then substitute potato starch flour for flour in your recipe, but cut the amount in half.

Soy Flour
Soy flour is a nutty tasting flour high in protein and fat content. It is best when used in combination with other flours and for baking brownies, or any baked goods with nuts or fruit.

Tapioca Flour
Tapioca Flour is a light, white, very smooth flour that comes from the cassava root. It makes baked goods impart a nice chewy taste. Use it in recipes where a chewy texture would be desirable. It would work nicely in bread recipes such as white bread or French bread. It is also easily combined with cornstarch and soy flour.

White Rice Flour
White rice flour is an excellent basic flour for gluten-free baking. It’s milled from polished white rice. Because it has such a bland flavor it’s perfect for baking because it doesn’t impart any flavors. It also works well with other flours. White rice flour is available in most health food stores, but also in Asian markets. At Asian markets it’s sold in different textures. The one that works the best is called fine textured white rice flour.

Substituting Gluten

Wheat flour contains gluten, which keeps cookies, cakes and pies from getting crumbly and falling apart. It’s what provides a good texture in baked goods because it traps pockets of air. This creates a nice airy quality that most baked goods possess when baked with traditional wheat flour. Gluten gives dough its elasticity, and it also helps instantly thicken sauces. In order to help retain this structure when using gluten-free flours, gluten substitutes must be added to the gluten-free flour mixture. For each cup of gluten-free flour mix, add at least 1 teaspoon of gluten substitute. Here are three very good substitutes for gluten:

Xanthum Gum
Xanthum gum comes from the dried cell coat of a microorganism called Zanthomonas campestris. Xanthum gum is created in a laboratory setting. This works well as a gluten substitution in yeast breads along with other baked goods. You can purchase it in health food stores or online.

Guar Gum
Guar gum is a powder that comes from the seed of the Cyamopsis tetragonolobus plant. It’s an excellent gluten substitute that’s available in health food stores or online.

Pre-gel Starch
Pre-gel Starch is an acceptable gluten substitute, but not as popular as xanthum gum or guar gum. It helps keep baked goods from being too crumbly. This too can be purchased at most health food stores or online.

Substitution Is The Solution

If you are ready to try some recipes, start with recipes that use relatively small amounts of wheat flour like brownies or pancakes. These generally turn out very nice and the difference in taste is minimal. Here are a few gluten-free flour mixes that can be used as a cup for cup substitute for wheat flour.

Gluten-Free Flour Mixture I

• 1/4 cup soy flour
• 1/4 cup tapioca flour
• 1/2 cup brown rice flour

Gluten-Free Flour Mixture II

• 6 cups white rice flour
• 2 cups potato starch
• 1 cup tapioca flour

Gluten-Free Flour Mixture III

• 3 parts soy flour – low fat is best
• 3 parts potato starch
• 2 parts rice flour – brown or white
• 1 part cornstarch or corn flour (not cornmeal)

Gluten-Free Flour Mixture IV

• 1 cup brown rice or white rice flour
• 2/3 cup garbanzo bean/chickpea flour
• 1/3 cup tapioca starch/flour

These mixtures, of course, can be doubled or cut in half depending on what you need. Keep these flour mixes stored in air tight containers at room temperature and keep them on hand to simplify your baking routine.

Another option is to purchase a gluten-free flour mixture to avoid the guesswork involved in substitutions. The store bought gluten-free flour mixes are usually a cup for cup substitute for wheat flour, but read the package directions to be sure. As I indicated before, my favorite is this mix from Bob’s Red Mill:

Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose Gluten-Free Baking Flour

Keeping these ingredients stocked in your gluten free pantry and keeping gluten free flour blends on hand will allow you to whip up just about any gluten free recipe in a moment’s notice. Thank you for visiting gluten intolerance symptoms and Happy Baking!