My wife started going gluten free 15 years ago on a whim after years of different doctors and misdiagnoses. Prior to going gluten free, she had several brain MRIs looking for lesions, was diagnosed with Undifferentiated Fibromyalgia (something doctors come up with when the don’t know what’s wrong with you), and was on a variety of mediations that just made things worse.
Ultimately, she decided to try gluten free to see if it helped and like magic all the gastrointestinal issues, joint pain, and brain fog disappeared! Back in 2010, going gluten free was not commonplace. The only products in stores that were gluten free were whole foods – meat and fruit.
There were a few pre-packaged foods that were probably gluten free, but the companies that made the products didn’t know if there was gluten in them or not. They didn’t know what gluten was.
Looking at ingredients labels was the first step when trying to determine if a product had gluten in it or not. Unfortunately, the labels weren’t always helpful and products were produced and packaged in manufacturing plants with other foods, thus the dreaded cross contamination.
Back in the beginning there was a lot of trial and error. Luckily, her diagnosis isn’t deadly like some peanut or shellfish allergies. So she tried some foods, sometimes had a reaction (being glutenized we called it) and sometimes no reaction.
Being glutenized for her was about two weeks of gluten moving through her body, going from one system to the other. It started in the GI tract, them moved to joints, and finally the brain. It was around a two-week process. Not a fun two weeks.
But over time we both new which products she could have and which to avoid. Over time some product manufactures tested their products and began to mark them as gluten free. Then national and international organizations started handing out “certified gluten free” labels to products that were under 20 parts per million of gluten.
This made shopping a little easier, but many companies continue to shy away from this certification. Maybe they don’t want the extra cost of testing or the added grief if the product doesn’t meet the standard. Also many manufacturers change where the product is made and/or packaged and the new place might be less careful with cross contamination.