How To Eat At Restaurants When You’re Gluten Intolerant

If you’re gluten-intolerant, you live in a time that is made for your favor.

Twenty years ago, the last thing a waitress wanted to hear was that you couldn’t have any foods containing gluten. She wouldn’t have known what to do about it, and neither would the chef. Gluten-free foods weren’t available at the grocery stores either.

Classes are available in every city teaching willing students how to make a gluten-free diet exciting, not just palatable. Chefs are now trained in how to cook for those who are gluten-intolerant. According to the National Institutes of Health, between 5 and 10% of all people have a gluten sensitivity. And once someone receives a diagnosis of celiac disease, they will dine out 80% less.

People believe that less than 10% of restaurants really know what they’re doing when it comes to preparing gluten-free food. (http://www.statisticbrain.com/gluten-celiac-disease-statistics/) And even though 41% of adults have no symptoms if they have gluten intolerance, they still don’t want to risk eating something that contains gluten.

So what will you do when you dine out at restaurants? Here are some guidelines you can use to make good choices:

1. Avoid the “I’m too hungry to care” mistake.

It’s far too easy to overeat or choose unhealthy foods when you go grocery shopping hungry. The same is true for dining out. Waiting in line to get seated at a restaurant can sometimes take up to an hour and a half, and that’s plenty of time to get ravenous. When blood sugar levels dip into the low blood sugar zone, cravings can surge up like an ugly creature from the deep. Low blood sugar symptoms include having no ability to say no to junk food and foods you are intolerant to. To avoid this, don’t ever leave your house hungry.

2. Dine at restaurants that offer gluten-free foods.

3. Be Knowledgeable About Cross-Contamination.

When you’re gluten-intolerant, even a few parts per million or a few parts per billion of gluten can be enough to set off symptoms. If you’re one of the people who don’t react symptomatically, you’re lucky, but it doesn’t mean that on a molecular level, you aren’t reacting. It may mean that your cells haven’t reached the level where enough of them are affected to cause the symptoms.

If a food with gluten such as toast is cut on a cutting board and the bread crumbs remain, cross contamination occurs when the gluten-free bread is then cut on the same cutting board. The crumbs could be enough to cause a reaction in you. Obviously, you can’t go back into the kitchen to stand over the restaurant staff and tell them what to do. However, you can explain this to them, suggesting that they wipe down any counters before they create your food.

Don’t order deep-fried foods that should be gluten-free. The oils for deep-frying foods in restaurants are re-used, and the chances that foods breaded with wheat flour in them were fried in the same fryer are too high.

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