Eating gluten free is healthy.\u00a0 And when asked, I will always tell people this.\u00a0 But it isn’t about cutting carbs or any other quick fix. \u00a0It boils down to one thing – paying attention to what you eat.<\/p>\n
When my daughter was diagnosed with celiac disease at 18 months,\u00a0my husband and I\u00a0had to quickly learn which food or products had gluten and which did not.\u00a0\u00a0 She depended on us to do this since she was too young to read.<\/p>\n
At the time, I thought\u00a0we ate reasonably healthy.\u00a0\u00a0 I knew\u00a0we occasionally ate “junk” food and for convenience bought items that were “processed.”\u00a0 However, once I began reading labels,\u00a0I realized how little I really knew about the food\u00a0we had been eating.<\/p>\n
Initially, there were lots of questions and our diet drastically changed.\u00a0 If I didn’t know what an ingredient was, \u00a0or if\u00a0something had been added to (like\u00a0“broth” to\u00a0a lot of meats), we didn’t bring it home.\u00a0\u00a0 This meant more fresh fruit and vegetables and an increase in unprocessed whole grains and\u00a0organic meats.<\/p>\n
Slowly, we added more convenience foods as we\u00a0became more comfortable with\u00a0safe ingredients, we had realized how much is added to even the simplest of store-bought\u00a0items.\u00a0 Besides\u00a0gluten, soy, high fructose corn syrup and MSG were astonishingly prevalent. \u00a0\u00a0 Additionally, we found many seemingly healthy foods (like varieties of fruit snacks and cereal bars) are essentially sugar and food coloring.<\/p>\n
Paying attention to what we buy and eat paid off. \u00a0Now, we all regularly crave and eat a fairly diverse range of fruits, vegetables and whole grains.\u00a0\u00a0 Other parents comment on how our kids help themselves to vegetables.<\/p>\n
The most amazing thing is how much good information is right there for anyone to read on the product in the form of an ingredient list and nutrition statement.<\/p>\n
Knowing what you put into your body is the true first step to healthier eating.\u00a0\u00a0 Celiac disease and going gluten free forced us to pay attention to what we eat and that has been the healthy difference in our diet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eating gluten free is healthy.\u00a0 And when asked, I will always tell people this.\u00a0 But it isn’t about cutting carbs or any other quick fix. \u00a0It boils down to one thing – paying attention to what you eat. When my daughter was diagnosed with celiac disease at 18 months,\u00a0my husband and I\u00a0had to quickly learn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[45],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n