Today, a gluten-free diet is used for various purposes. She is prescribed by a doctor to some patients to prevent the development of complications of celiac disease, while others independently choose the discussed nutrition system in order to get rid of extra pounds. Interestingly, such a diet often becomes part of a comprehensive treatment for autism.
Material Content:
Gluten Free Diet
The main purpose of a gluten-free diet should be called relief of the patient with celiac disease. This dangerous disease of the digestive system cannot be completely cured by simply changing your own diet. But a special diet blocks all the main symptoms of the disease and allows the patient to quickly return to normal life.
The intestine, which does not cope with gluten, is restored soon after a change in diet and returns to full work. We can say that the disease is "frozen." So that the disease no longer bothers the patient, a gluten-free diet will have to be adhered to until the end of life.
This food system is also recommended for adults and children with congenital gluten intolerance. If you strictly adhere to it, you will be able to forget about all the unpleasant symptoms of an allergy and prevent the occurrence of dangerous consequences.
List of allowed and prohibited products
There is a whole list of foods that are strictly forbidden to eat during a gluten-free diet.But all the rest (not falling into it) can be safely included in your daily diet without any special restrictions.
Prohibited foods and drinks that need to be completely excluded from the menu:
- all pasta and bakery products with gluten in the composition;
- semolina, durum and sprouted wheat, oatmeal, barley, spelled, rye;
- cookies, cakes, crackers;
- canned vegetables and fruits;
- alcohol (especially beer);
- any cereals and instant soups (including bouillon cubes);
- all pastries;
- fast food, semi-finished products (including ham, sausages, sausage);
- crackers, chips;
- all kinds of mayonnaise;
- shop yogurts;
- crab sticks of any kind;
- modified starch;
- ice cream;
- chocolate, sweets.
When buying finished products, a person who follows the indicated diet should carefully study their composition for the presence of gluten.
Only at first glance it may seem that the list of prohibitions turned out to be too extensive.
In fact, there are many permitted foods and drinks. Among them:
- any flour containing no gluten;
- rice, buckwheat, corn, millet;
- seafood, meat of various kinds, fish;
- eggs (both chicken and quail);
- nuts, dried fruits, seeds;
- legumes and soybeans;
- cocoa, natural coffee, tea;
- almost all dairy and dairy products (only yoghurts from the first list will have to be excluded);
- margarine, butter and vegetable;
- gluten free bread;
- honey;
- all fresh vegetables, berries, herbs, fruits.
Gluten Free Diet: Weekly Menu
You can get used to this diet quite quickly. To do this, you need to properly compose your daily menu, trying to make it as satisfying and tasty as possible.
An approximate weekly diet with gluten-free foods is as follows:
- The first day will begin with a large portion of rice porridge in milk with fresh berries. Her cup of coffee with a gluten-free sandwich and butter will complement her. For lunch, you can eat broccoli puree soup with grated cheese, chicken cooked in any way with potatoes and vegetable salad. For dinner - wheat porridge with walnuts, kefir.
- On the second day, breakfast will consist of cottage cheese with fruits and sugar, rice bread with honey. Lunch - from chicken soup, pilaf and vegetable salad. Dinner - from potatoes baked with cream and salmon.
- On the third day menu, you should include fried eggs with cheese and gluten-free bread for breakfast. For lunch - fish soup, chicken cutlet with rice, vegetable salad. For dinner - casserole of cottage cheese with your favorite fruit.
- The fourth day breakfast will consist of carrot salad with fried slices of cheese and a handful of any nuts. Lunch - from vegetable soup stewed with chicken beans. Dinner - from pancakes on rice flour, stewed fish and fresh orange.
- The fifth day of the diet will include a hearty breakfast of pancakes with honey (on gluten-free flour), lunch of chicken cutlets with boiled rice and a dinner of fish baked in a foil with mushrooms and vegetables.
- The sixth day you can start with corn flakes (gluten free), drenched in milk, 2 hard-boiled eggs. For lunch, you should eat borsch with meat, meatballs with mashed potatoes. And for dinner - buckwheat porridge with boiled chicken.
- The breakfast of the seventh day will include, for example, cheesecakes (on gluten-free flour) with a handful of dried fruits. For lunch, you can cook cheese soup with fresh herbs and fish with boiled buckwheat. For dinner - baked chicken fillet with vegetable salad.
The published menu is an example. It can be adjusted, taking into account your own tastes and a list of allowed products. In many ways, the diet also depends on the purpose for which the diet in question is chosen. If to reduce weight, then all products should be stewed, boiled, baked using a minimum amount of oil. It is also advisable to reduce portions. As for drinks, you can finish meals with coffee, tea, cocoa, compote, berry juice, freshly squeezed juice and other permitted options.
Gluten-free diet menu for a child
If a gluten-free diet for children is prescribed, then in this case the menu needs to be drawn up, starting from the age of small patients. Both the baby and the older child can be offered various cereals with berries and fruits for breakfast - buckwheat, millet, rice. The main thing is to cook them yourself, and not buy quick mixes.
For lunch, cheese, meat or fish soup is suitable. It can be supplemented with meat or chicken cooked in any way with a side dish of potatoes and other favorite vegetables. Children especially love mashed soups. It is allowed to cook croutons for such a treat exclusively from gluten-free bread.
Dinner should be made light of fermented milk drinks or vegetable salads with seafood. You can offer your child a serving of cottage cheese with fruit, casserole or cottage cheese pancakes from it.
Gluten-free diet for children with autism
Even doctors recognize the effectiveness of such a diet as part of a comprehensive treatment of autism. A few decades ago, specialists were able to establish the relationship of the disease with food proteins. A special diet helps to some extent block the existing disorder. This effect is explained by a decrease in the amount of proteins and peptides.
For a healthy person, these substances are harmless, but in the body of a patient with autism, they can cause processes that exacerbate mental disorders. In addition, a gluten-free diet helps normalize the functioning of the intestines and brain.
Healthy recipes
Today, many interesting recipes for gluten-free dishes are known. They will make it easy to tolerate a diet and even pamper yourself with goodies.
White bread
Ingredients: 210 g of boiled water, 3 tbsp. vegetable oil, 2 tsp fast yeast, 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar, a whole egg and one protein, 280 g flour (gluten-free), 2 tsp. xanth gum.
- Yeast dissolves in a tepid little water, after 10-12 minutes a whole egg, protein, oil is added to them.
- The remaining components are placed in the blender bowl and begin to whisk slowly. Gradually, the mixture from the first step is added to them. In the end, the speed of the device increases.
- The mass is laid out in an oiled bread pan. It remains warm for an hour, and then baked in a hot oven for 45 minutes.
Apple pie
Ingredients: 3 sweet and sour apples, lemon, 3 tablespoons, 160 g sugar, a glass of low-fat kefir, 70 g butter, 210 g rice flour, 1 tsp. baking powder.
- Slices of peeled apples are placed in a bowl, poured with lemon juice and whipped egg and sugar mixture. Melted butter is sent to the same container.
- Dry ingredients are mixed and added to the dough. They are mixed with the ingredients from the first step. The dough is transferred to an oiled form.
- Bake a cake in the oven for 45-50 minutes.
How does a gluten-free diet help you lose weight?
The diet in question, perhaps, can also be used to get rid of extra pounds. Having abandoned flour products, sweets, fast food and other enemies of an ideal figure, a person quickly begins to lose weight.
The best part is that he uses the permitted products without any special restrictions on the size of the servings. Such a food system does not involve starvation, so the diet is tolerated quite easily.
What is the gluten-free diet used for?
The recommended gluten-free nutritional program as a whole provides a general healing effect for the body. Metabolic processes come back to normal, toxins are removed. Just use the diet solely for the purpose of getting rid of extra kilos and cleansing the body is permissible only after prior consultation with a specialist.
With celiac disease, autism, celiac intolerance, the diet under discussion is not just recommended, but an indispensable part of general therapy. Only with this way of eating can the relief or complete disappearance of the symptoms of these ailments be achieved, as well as preventing the development of their dangerous consequences.
The benefits and harms of diet
A positive result of the rejection of gluten is manifested in the fact that a person with an individual intolerance to such a substance reduces to zero the likelihood of an allergic reaction. A patient with celiac disease, therefore, takes care of the normal functioning of his digestive tract, which is not able to perceive gluten. As a result, the total calorie content of the patient’s diet is also reduced, which helps to get rid of extra pounds without much effort.
If we talk about the dangers of diet and gluten-free foods, then it consists in the minimum amount of protein that the body receives with this way of eating. In order to maintain normal muscle tissue, you need to make up for the deficiency of the specified element with permitted natural products.
