Researchers from Italy and the United States have analyzed the entire genome, or DNA structure, of the grain and have shown it to be free of gluten on a molecular level. This confirms earlier reports, studies and successful food challenges which all suggested the cereal contains no gluten and is considered safe for those with celiac disease.

Because the sorghum genome was only recently published, until now scientists had no way of proving on a molecular level that the grain was safe for people living with celiac disease. Allergic Living reminds, however to always check the label in case of potential cross-contamination.

In the West, sorghum has traditionally been used as feed for livestock, while in Africa and parts of Asia it has been used as a food for people for a long time. Farmers have developed ‘food-grade’ sorghum, which is meant for human consumption and is already used in a variety of products including some tortillas and flours. It can even be popped, like popcorn.

The researchers note in their report that in addition to being gluten-free, sorghum is nutritious, making it an ideal option for those with celiac disease. Previous studies of sorghum have suggested it may have a wide range of health benefits, including slowing the growth of tumors, reducing cholesterol levels and having higher levels of anti-oxidants than other grains and fruits. Other benefits as a gluten replacement include its low cost and neutral taste.

Find out which ones are enriched with vitamins, fiber, iron and protein in the charts below.

Print them and bring them along the next time you go grocery shopping.

GF pastas available in the U.S.:

GF pastas available in Canada:

Shelley Case, RD, is an international celiac and gluten-free expert, a featured columnist in Allergic Living magazine and author of Gluten-Free Diet: A Comprehensive Resource Guide.

Related reading:
- The Celiac Expert: Comparing Gluten-Free Cereal & Oatmeals

Start Your Day with a Healthy Breakfast

Studies prove it: those who skip breakfast tend to overeat later in the day – often resulting in weight gain. So fuel your body with a healthy breakfast such as: a gluten-free cold cereal made with a nutritious grains like amaranth, brown rice, buckwheat, millet, quinoa or teff and topped with fresh fruit. Compare cereal nutrient levels in the comprehensive chart I created for Allergic Living magazine. (Canadians, see this version.)

For a hot cereal, make a tasty bowl of oatmeal from pure, uncontaminated oats with raisins and slivered almonds. Try a smoothie with low fat yogurt, fresh or frozen fruit, ground flax, dash of vanilla and honey. Or bake and freeze muffins from a healthy gluten-free mix.

Next: Portion sizes

The chips, made by Pepsico Canada, for the most part have always been made without gluten, but now customers can be assured that Lay’s facilities and manufacturing processes have been verified by a third party. (Only one variety, Lay’s BarBQ Flavour, won’t bear the new CCA logo.)

Paul Valder, the consultant developing the CCA’s certification program, says this is just the first of a number of certified products consumers will see over the coming months.

The CCA is in discussions with a major retailer for certifying its private label line, and also in the gluten-free pipeline are: a national brand that makes crackers and cookies, a national bakery, and a generic drug manufacturer.

“I was passed around from doctor to doctor,” recalls the Doylestown, Pennsylvania mother of two. “Nobody could diagnose me.” Like other patients with puzzling symptoms, she was even advised to see a psychiatrist.

Swollen joints in her hands and feet eventually led her to a rheumatologist, who diagnosed her with celiac disease in 2006 and referred back to her family physician. But that wasn’t the end of Auman’s woes, since the doctor was only superficially informed about her condition. “They gave me a piece of paper that just said: ‘No barley, no wheat, no rye,’” she recalls.

Confused and seeking to educate herself, Auman turned to Dr. Google – the Internet, that is – to learn more. The result? “I became afraid to eat,” she says. Although her symptoms improved on her new gluten-free diet, she found herself “starving” and quickly dropped 15 pounds. In some ways, it was a welcome loss for Auman, who had been moderately overweight. But feeling famished wasn’t sustainable.

Driven by constant hunger and a burgeoning depression, Auman headed to comfort foods found in the gluten-free aisle of the grocery store. “Because I felt like I couldn’t eat anything, I overate the foods that I could eat,” she says. It wasn’t long before she gained back the 15 pounds – “and then some.” Now, she had a life-changing autoimmune disease and a weight problem to worry about.

It turns out Auman’s case isn’t unusual. In a 2006 study published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, a whopping 81 percent of celiacs on the gluten-free diet gained weight within two years after diagnosis, and the dietitians Allergic Living spoke to say they see this all the time.

That’s what makes the gluten-free diet’s recent rise in popularity among those who have not been diagnosed with celiac disease so peculiar.

Gluten-free is today is what low-carb was 10 years ago: the “It” diet. Inspired by non-celiac celebrities who tout gluten-free as a way to slim down (we’re looking at you, Gwyneth Paltrow and Russell Crowe), North Americans are turning to the diet in droves. According to a study conducted by consumer market researchers the NPD Group, one-quarter of Americans are trying to reduce or completely avoid gluten in their diets. But if they are doing so to lose weight, they are terribly misguided.

Next: Feeling better – and the weight creep

Hopper first experienced one of his “sessions,” when he was 64. For seven hours he was vomiting, had diarrhea and felt excruciating cramping in his legs and feet. At times during this and subsequent episodes, the pain in his legs was so bad, he had to hold onto a door just to stand up. The vomiting always ended after bringing up bile that had leaked into his stomach. Delirious, weak and dehydrated, he would head to the hospital.

It wasn’t until he was on his way from his hometown of Ellicott City, Maryland to Boston for business that Hopper finally found out what was causing these excruciating bouts of poor health. After enduring a plane ride of painful symptoms, Hopper spent an hour and a half in the airport bathroom waiting to feel well enough to buy a return ticket home. While in line, he doubled-over in pain. After checking his vital signs, airport medics called an ambulance and he was rushed to Massachusetts General Hospital where he stayed for 11 days.

There he underwent a battery of tests – MRIs, CAT scans, blood work and more – just as he had during his other hospitalizations. Once stabilized, he began eating hospital food but his symptoms quickly returned. He was put on a liquid diet of Jell-O, juice and broth until the symptoms disappeared. After returning to regular hospital food and experiencing symptoms, which again went away on the liquid diet, something clicked with the doctor overseeing his stay.

A DNA test (Hopper is part of the 10 per cent of people who test negative to the blood test designed to detect celiac disease) and an endoscopy confirmed the doctor’s suspicions that this was celiac disease. After three days on a gluten-free diet, Hopper was much improved. He was released from the hospital and returned home to Maryland.

Growing Trend

According to groundbreaking research conducted by a team led by Dr. Alessio Fasano, the medical director of the University of Maryland Center for Celiac Research, Hopper is part of a growing trend. More and more adults are developing celiac disease quite late in life, and then being diagnosed with it.

For years, experts on the disease believed that such people had simply gone undiagnosed for many years of life, as celiac symptoms can be vague and are similar to symptoms of many other diseases. Alternatively, the theory was that they may not have even had symptoms, even though gluten was damaging their small intestines.

However, the findings, published online in Annals of Medicine in October, 2010, suggest that adults who are genetically predisposed to developing celiac disease may actually tolerate gluten their whole lives without a problem. Then one day, something changes and the body can no longer tolerate the protein, found in wheat, barley and rye – celiac disease has developed. For people like Hopper, this means re-learning everything you knew about grocery shopping, cooking, eating at restaurants or at friends’ homes.

Next: Findings a Bolt from the Blue

“I knew something was really wrong,” she recalls of those memorably miserable days of 2003. “But I just didn’t know what it was.”

What she felt was so opposite the Energizer Bunny that she is by nature. Cafferty, who trained as a nurse, had always had a busy career. She held senior administrative positions, running a seniors’ home, then owning a company that provided hospitals with respiratory and physical therapists. Now, she was dragging herself through her days, as husband Ken Cafferty watched and worried. What had happened to his vibrant wife?

Her doctor did blood work – no anemia, nor anything obvious. She sought out an endocrinologist and even got a second opinion before being put on medication for a sluggish thyroid. Yet she felt no better and the rashes kept appearing. An allergist did allergy blood tests, which indicated some food sensitivities but not necessarily allergies. The results were inconclusive and not illuminating.

Then in late 2003, a friend who heard about Shelia’s health concerns mentioned that she’d gone gluten-free and felt much better for it. Cafferty decided to try the GF diet – though she hastens to add in retrospect that she should have been tested for celiac disease or gluten sensitivity before eliminating gluten.

All the same, the results were startling. Cafferty felt a difference on the days she didn’t eat gluten: the depression began lifting, her skin began to clear, the bloating subsided.

She decided to undertake a strict gluten-free regimen. “I felt so much better after just two weeks. It was like I was my old self.”

The Journey Begins

This also marked the beginning of her journey into the gluten-free community, learning to cook well without gluten and getting involved with a support group when the Caffertys moved to the Indianapolis area.

With her organizing nature, Cafferty was soon planning events: gluten-free lunches, pancake brunches, holiday dinners and, eventually, a statewide luncheon. She called Dr. Alessio Fasano, the renowned celiac researcher, and he and Pam King from the University of Maryland’s Center for Celiac Disease Research agreed to come and that he would speak. “It was a packed house, we learned so much, it was fantastic.”

She and Ken Cafferty were greatly impressed that for both Fasano and his team “it isn’t about ego. It’s about helping people, it’s about improving the quality of their lives. There is no fluff; they are the real deal.”

Shelia and Ken visited Dr. Fasano’s center and he asked to do genetic testing for celiac, despite the fact that Shelia was already gluten-free. Eureka, she didn’t carry the genes for celiac disease, but Dr. Fasano was able to deduce from her symptom history that she definitely has gluten sensitivity. Finally, Shelia Cafferty had a diagnosis for the condition that had plagued her.

Ken Cafferty also represented a trust, which acts anonymously to fund humanitarian ventures. Shelia suggested: why not consider support for the Center for Celiac Disease Research and its life-changing research? The Caffertys helped to pull the parties together and the result was: an outstanding donation of $45 million.

And Now, an Expo

Never one to sit back, this year Shelia has organized the Gluten Free Living Now Expo for Oct. 7-9 in Carmel, Indiana. The event has an impressive schedule and features top speakers – such as Dr. Fasano – cooking demonstrations and workshops. (See the details here.)

Since pulling together an event like this takes an incredible amount of work, it’s a good thing that Cafferty has no symptoms to hold her back these days. Instead she exudes about her presenters, about the array of gluten-free and allergy-friendly foods, the vendors who’ll be turning up and showing their great products.

She wants others who have gluten intolerance to have what she now enjoys: the good life.

In a matter of weeks, John Forberger, the tweeting, gluten-free triathlete (@GlutenFreeTri) and Jules Shepard (aka Jules Gluten Free) managed to gather hundreds of supporters together in Washington for the impressive May 4 summit.

The purpose? To send the message to the Food and Drug Administration that those living with celiac disease were sick and tired of waiting for a clear and reliable labels on gluten-free foods.

The fact is, people are getting sick and tired – and bloated, and brain-fogged, and extreme gastrointestinal symptoms and worse – from eating foods that claim to be “gluten-free” but really aren’t.

Sure some food makers have gone to great lengths to test and be responsible. (We love you guys.) But others? They’ve just jumped on the bandwagon, trying to cash in on gluten-free popularity without testing foods to meet standards. That’s because, of course, there are still no standards in the U.S.

It was not meant to be this way. Under the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA), the FDA was supposed get moving on defining a standard for what constitutes gluten-free. But four years after that process started? Still nothing, nada.

The message of those at the May 4 summit: Change has simply got to come. Afterall, this issue affects the daily lives of millions with celiac disease or gluten sensitivity.

But here’s the cool part about the two advocates and their summit. They got across their message in Washington – not with placards or shouting but – with cake.

A GF cake, to be specific. And not just a measly little round or rectangle. Jules Shepard is an accomplished baker and gluten-free entrepreneur (she even markets her own line of GF flour), so our creative lobbyists decided to build that behemoth you saw in our NewsReport.

All day on May 4, Jules, John and their helpers built and frosted, and Jules dangled off a ladder to frost and pipe some more. The result was a cake that weighed in at a ton and stood over 11 feet.

But the best part? Their imaginative public relations work, their petition with thousands of signatures and their social media efforts were noticed by those with the power to effect change. Michael Taylor, the FDA deputy commissioner of foods, made a surprise appearance at the summit and spoke encouraging words.

As Taylor told NBC in an interview earlier that day:  “I want people to understand that the FDA gets it.” “We’re on this. We’ll get this moving.”

He said that in a matter of weeks, the proposed standard would be out for public comment.

Let’s hope so. We’ll all be watching and eagerly anticipating. And if the FDA does not get its act together on GF labeling? Well it had better watch out for the next moves from Forberger and Shepard. Afterall, you don’t want to mess with a triathlete and a baker with the stamina to frost, on a ladder, for hours and hours. They just aren’t going to give up.

Related Links:

– Join the 1in133 GF Label Petition here.
– Jules Shepard’s recipe, used for the giant cake, here.

-hot dogs
-frozen burgers (meat, chicken, fish)
-seasoned or dry roasted nuts
-pumpkin and sunflower seeds
-potato chips
-cheese spreads
-soups
-Worcestershire sauce
-baking powder
-canned cake frosting
-chocolate bars
-regular beer, ale and lager
-baked beans
-sauces, marinades, salad dressing
-specialty prepared mustards
-cooking spray
-baking powder
-soups, broths, bouillon cubes
-candies, chocolates, chocolate bars, licorice
-malt vinegar

Other Names

-food starch
-seasoning
-hydrolyzed vegetable protein

Source: Shelley Case, RD, author of Gluten-Free Diet

Shelley Case is a consulting dietitian and author of Gluten-Free Diet: A Comprehensive Resource Guide. She is on the advisory boards of the Canadian Celiac Association, the Celiac Disease Foundation and Gluten Intolerance Group.

At first, I mourned. Months past, and I began to experiment. Sometimes, my baking sessions turned out well. I threw together a faux Fig Newton recipe that was so extraordinary from the first try that it ended up in my book. However, the bagels with teff flour? Those were gross.

Mostly, I felt mystified. Why did some recipes work while, other times, cakes fell or came out of the oven raw in the center? I was following established recipes, substituting gluten-free flour mixes cup for cup. Then this year, a breakthrough. I bought a kitchen scale.

Reading Michael Ruhlman’s book Ratio, I discovered what I had been searching for – a formula. I learned that traditional bread always follows the same ratio: five parts flour to three parts water, plus some yeast. I baked a few loaves with gluten-free flours in this ratio, hoping it would work. It didn’t. They were a little too dry and crumbly, with the consistency of cornbread.

I don’t give up easily. I pulled out pen and paper, a calculator, and recipes from my website that really worked. After some time, I understood. Gluten-free bread has to be five parts flour, three parts water, and one part liquid that’s also a protein (for me, that’s one egg, which weighs two ounces. Another suggestion is flaxseed meal mixed with water, sour cream, or yogurt.) Gluten is a binder, but it’s also a protein. We have to replace both parts.

I baked a loaf of bread weighing everything on the scale: 20 ounces of flour, 12 ounces of water, plus two eggs. I threw in xanthan and guar gums for binding, some sugar, the yeast, a good pinch of salt, a bit of honey to counteract the slight bitterness of the gums, and great hope.

Three hours later, I had a good loaf of bread. Not just good gluten-free bread, but good bread.

I’ve much to learn but have started to crack the code. These days, my toddler stands on a chair beside me at our kitchen counter. As I tumble sorghum flour into a bowl, she reaches for the buttons on the scale. Gently, I block her hand. “Wait a second, sweetie. Mama needs four more ounces and then we can make this pie together.”

See Shauna’s recipe for gluten-free pie crust.

Shauna James Ahern’s and Daniel Ahern’s new cookbook is Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef, published by John Wiley & Sons. Their blog is Glutenfreegirl.com.