"celiac" news and stories

One of the things that is largely off limits to anyone with celiac disease is beer. Almost all beers are made with malted barley and other gluten-containing ingredients, such as wheat, barley, rye and/or oats.

New Grist is a beer that is brewed entirely gluten-free using sorghum, hops, water, rice and gluten-free yeast grown on molasses. It is produced by the Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and is available in approximately 1/3 of the country. Right now, New Grist is carried by stores that include Whole Foods, which is likely to make the beer more widely available.

To get an idea of how in-demand such a product is, it is interesting to note the Anheuser Busch is actually testing a gluten-free brew of their own. It isn't ready for the market yet, but simply the fact that the country's largest brewery is interested in offering what many would consider to be a niche market means that celiacs are being recognized as a significant portion of the population.

Other gluten-free beer options include Dragon's Gold and HB (formerly called Passover Honey Beer).

Can you believe that the cake on the front cover of this book is gluten free? Is everyone - whether you have allergies or not - drooling? 125 Best Gluten-Free Recipes is, as the title suggests, a cookbook of entirely gluten-free recipes that work. It's a great resource for both celiacs and for people who have friends and family with celiac disease. The recipes cover every meal of the day and primarily consist of made-over recipes that will reintroduce old favorites (now gluten-free, of course) back into your kitchen. There are many different muffins, cookies, cakes and even recipes for sandwich loaves because when authors Donna Washburn and Heather Butt asked families what kinds of gluten-free recipes they were interested in seeing, these were some of the favorites that they named. They're comforting foods and the book lets celiacs keep them that way.

In addition to the recipes, which are accompanied by wonderful photographs, there is an extensive guide to alternative flours and techniques for using them, which will enable cooks to adapt some of their old favorites to a new dietary standards.

Source