Ingredients means what is combined to make a dish, or what is put into food.
It is the individual ingredients that you must watch when you have food allergies. When buying food, check packaged goods for their list of ingredients to see what goes into the food. From this, you can determine if it is safe for you to eat or not.
The list of ingredients will also help you to determine if the food is healthy or unhealthy.
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Martha has a question about wheat and yeast:
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If you are allergic to wheat or gluten, you probably already know how difficult, it is to avoid foods containing wheat or gluten.
The trouble is that the more you look for foods without an ingredient, the more foods you find which you can’t eat!
The first step to eating wheat/gluten-free, is to start looking for foods you can eat. It tends to attract the right things into your life. Of course even as you can for ingredients you can eat, you must also be on the lookout for ingredients you must avoid. But start with what you can eat, it is so much more encouraging!
The fact is that even with a gluten-free diet, there are lots of things you can eat. Here is a partial list. I will expand on it over time.
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“Garfava” is a mixture of chickpea flour (or garbanzo flour, know as chana in Indian stores) and fava bean flour. It is sold in some health-food stores as a replacement for whole wheat flour.
Because it lacks gluten, it is not a direct replacement for wheat flour. You may have to add xanthium gum to some recipes to get the correct consistency.
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As part of the section with word definitions used on this site, I have added a section about yeast. It is mostly about yeast in food, beer and wine.
I may update and expand the yeast article in the future, but for now I will leave it as is, unless I get comments asking for more information or pointing out inaccuracies.
I hope you find the yeast article useful!
Read the new article about yeast: yeast
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Is a gluten-free, casein-free diet harmful? Someone asked me this question recently.
The short answer is that this diet is perfectly safe.
Many people world wide don’t drink milk, either because it is not available in their part of the world, or because it makes them sick. Is milk safe? That in itself is a loaded question, which I will not answer here! Certainly not drinking milk is safe.
Gluten itself is not essential to human health in any way shape or form. Not that it is bad either, unless you are allergic to it or you are a celiac. By cutting out gluten, you are cutting out wheat. What does this cut out of your diet? More unhealthy food than healthy food, in most cases!
Most people worry that by cutting out milk, they will reduce their calcium intake, and suffer from osteoporosis. Firstly, there are many other foods that contain calcium. Secondly, the highest rate of osteoporosis in the world coincides with areas that have the highest milk consumption.
As for cutting out wheat, it is inconvenient. But nothing more than that.
The refined wheat that most people eat in cakes, cookies and breads has little nutritional value and is high in simple starches, which is not healthy.
In Southeast Asia, the diet is naturally both gluten-free and milk-free. They use rice and soy instead, among other foods.
By cutting out milk and wheat from your diet, and looking for healthy food to eat instead, your diet will be safer and better.
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Unhealthy food is food that reduces the health of your body. This is not quite the same as eating food you are allergic to. In that case, the food is unhealthy only for those with the allergy.
Junk food is one example of unhealthy food. This type of food is typically high in sugar, salt, food additives, and unhealthy varieties of fat.
Speaking of fat, this is the source of a great deal of misunderstanding. For example, saturated fat and trans-fats are very unhealthy, where as other types of fats, such as omega-3 and omega-9 (especially in the correct ratio) are essential to your health.
Refined food is probably one of the biggest culprites when it comes to unhealthy food. When food is refined, it looses much of the nutritional value and dietary necessities present in whole foods. It also oxidizes, and oxidized food is unhealthy food.
Food additives are another cause of unhealthy food. Preservatives, for example, have to problems. Many preservatives are unhealthy, even carcinogenic. The use of preservatives often indicates a flawed food processing system, where the food is exposed for too long. Watch out for this in tinned food. Canning should keep the food fresh, so there is normally no need for preservatives in canned food.
Heavy metals and other toxins are another cause of unhealthy food. These enter the food chain in many ways, including industrial pollution, pesticides, veterinary treatment of agricultural animals, and growth hormones.
Unhealthy food should be avoided by all, especially for those with allergies. Unhealthy food could be a factor in triggering allergies in the first place.
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