Healthy Food Choices: Gluten-Free Foods

Video Transcript

MARY HONDROS: If you are on a gluten free diet you need to remember to avoid gluten and any of its sources. The main sources of gluten include wheat flour, anything that is whole wheat or says whole wheat on the label, anything with barley flour or rye flour and anything with malt those are all the main sources of gluten in the diet. Unfortunately this includes most things that you are going to find at your bread isles, your cereal isles, your pasta isles and a lot of different foods made from grain. So if you do have to follow a gluten free diet some good substitutes that you can keep in mind are things like buckwheat flour, rice flour, corn flour, corn meal flour, potato, tapioca flour and any of those things--any products that are basically labeled gluten free are safe for you to eat. So these can be substituted to make things like bread and cereals and crackers that you normally would not be able to have. So basically foods that are safe that are gluten free in general are fresh fruits, canned vegetables and any frozen fruits and vegetables as well, those usually do not have gluten additives. A good idea is to learn the alternative names of gluten in the diet. Gluten can also be labeled as something called malt and a bunch of different names so you need to be able to recognize those on the food label so that you can look at the label and choose a food that is indeed gluten free. So four tips if you are following a gluten free diet in general are remember that you need to avoid most bread products found in a main grocery store but if you go to a specialty food store you could find gluten free products. They usually have gluten free isles now in specialty food stores and so those will have products already labeled for you. Secondly, remember to learn to identify gluten sources that are not labeled by the term gluten necessarily, anything with the term whole wheat, wheat flour, rye flour, or barley flour on the label generally means that it has a gluten in it. Thirdly, you can safely eat white rice flours, almond flours, arrowroot, potato, corn meal and tapioca flours those are good substitutes for regular flour or products in your diet. And those are all tips on following a gluten free diet.