Reading Food Labels for Gluten

Video Transcript

"You don't really have to stress about food labels if you eat organic, healthy, fresh food. In other words, if you're just eating meat that has no additives meaning it's not in a sauce, it hasn't been marinated, you're safe. If you're eating a vegetable that's fresh that comes right off the produce aisle, you're fine. If you're eating fruit same thing, unless of course it's frozen because sometimes they'll put gluten and things of that nature in it. The same thing with vegetables, any cheese sauce is a big no-no. So if you're eating fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, fresh meat you have nothing to worry about. Potatoes you can have, corn. It's when we get into sauces and any kind of processed foods. So if you're an adult and you eat healthy and you want to eat lean meats and vegetables and fruits you won't have a big problem with reading labels, but my son who happens to be five years old wants pretzels and he wants potato chips. So that's where it comes into a big obstacle for me with reading labels. Of course, as I said, if you go to the health food stores we have the luxury of just seeing "gluten-free", can't get much more plain than that. I know when I put this in his body he's a-ok and safe. However, if we go into a regular store, let's say we'll bring up potato chips, I will get barbecue potato chips. One time I purchased some for him and everything seemed fine and his behavior just went crazy. He started, again, acting very autistic. So I looked at the label and the only thing on there that I could see that was different was paprika, and I thought how can paprika have gluten. Guess what? A lot of spices have gluten in them and paprika would be one of them. Also, pancake syrup, I've checked that and I thought well this is just sugar, and maple syrup what could possibly be in here. Well, caramel color is another hidden gluten source so he went haywire after having some pancakes. So if it does not say gluten free on it you really have to read the labels and again it's on these hidden food sources. If you're an adult, beer. You don't open a can of beer and it says "Gluten free!" or "has gluten!" so unfortunately the FDA still hasn't caught on to labeling things for people with all these gluten intolerances. They've realized there are a lot of people allergic to peanuts so of course there's peanut warnings. You might see "this product contains soy", you might see "this product contains milk" because there is a lot of lactose intolerant people out there, but for whatever reason the gluten people, intolerant people, haven't made their voice known and that's why our labels are not real clear."