Monday, July 05, 2010

Food labels

Today is day 1 of the no gluten, no dairy, no sugar diet.  After looking through the book a bit more and trying to figure out what to do, we went to the grocery store to stock up.  While the author wants us to stay away from all processed foods and sugar, we have to be realistic.  We will be eating very differently, but we know that going completely without snacks of any kind is crazy talk.  We have been looking at labels for years, so that wasn't any hardship, but we had to be a little more careful when spotting gluten.  Did you know that soy sauce has wheat in it?  What the heck?  We found some gluten-free soy sauce, though.

Also, as far as crackers and cereal goes, rice options don't seem to be all that healthy, so we had to do some more comparisons of nutritional info.  I mean, I'm pretty sure that rice krispies have very little nutritional value.  Also, some things do have a little sugar in them, or molasses or other fruit-based sweeteners, but we have to be honest with what we'll eat.  We're already changing a lot at once, and I'm still a little bit obsessed with food, so I have to have stuff around that I'm going to like.

In that vein, I am going to be spending money and living it up on grapes and sugar snap peas. I also bought yummy Frontera salsa, and it will be a chips and salsa kind of life.

We could have spent even more money and gotten bread made from rice flour and fake cheese, then just pretended that hardly anything had changed and had sandwiches every day, but we resisted.  I may buy some alternative flours or bread mixes in the future and get out the bread maker, but I want our habits to change into eating more salads & small snacks like fruit and nuts. 

Right now, we're not stretching that much, and it's great:  chicken in the oven, brown rice cooking in the rice cooker, and we're having tacos!  Huzzzah for corn tortillas! 

1 comment:

Ang said...

I went to Carino's (Italian restaurant) with a couple of girlfriends yesterday, and I noticed that they offer a gluten-free menu. I checked it out, hoping to find some lower-carb alternatives (though, as you pointed out, rice is gluten-free and definitely not low-carb). I discovered that they offer mixed veggies instead of pasta! I was tickled pink and had a marvelous lunch. The alternatives are out there, and it sounds like you're doing a great job of being creative and finding what works. :)