The Gluten-Free Cookbook A Gluten-Free Diet Based on Five Ancient Grains for People With Gluten Sensitivity

By Sam Dickinson

The purpose of this book is to create a cookbook based on ancient grains for patients with gluten sensitivity to provide them with healthy and tasteful gluten-free alternatives that they can easily prepare at home.

This book is divided into five different chapters based on the type of grain (polenta, amaranth, brown rice, buckwheat, quinoa); each chapter provides recipes using the specific grain for breakfast, lunch, and dinner options, followed by the macronutrient breakdown for each recipe.

The content for this cookbook was created to address the micronutrient deficiencies that individuals following a gluten-free diet often suffer from due to their lack of nutrition education about how to implement this diet healthily.

In this book, you will find:

What about celiac disease

gluten-free diet guidelines

budget recipes

Many easy gluten-free recipes for lunch, dinner, and breakfast.

• Language: English
• Publisher: vincenzo nappi
• Release date: Aug 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201965655

Book preview

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Introduction

The recent rise in the public interest on gluten-free (GF) diets is causing many Americans to re-assess how gluten affects their overall well-being. The rise of GF products in the markets, influenced mainly by advertising campaigns that claim a medical need for a GF diet, goes well beyond the celiac disease population numbers of 1 out of 133 Americans diagnosed with this disease. A new illness has emerged from this line of thinking, non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS), with 17 million Americans claiming gluten sensitivity. Unlike celiac disease (CD), which has a biological basis, the only requirement to diagnose NCGS is the presence of gastrointestinal symptoms caused by wheat ingestion and their disappearance on a GF or wheat-free diet.

In CD the role of gluten is clear: toxic peptide sequences have been determined, genetic susceptibility loci have been identified, and pathological processes are fairly well known. CD is an autoimmune disease as can be seen by the demonstration of specific serologic markers, most notably serum anti-tTG antibodies, autoimmune enteropathy, and autoimmune comorbidities. However, NCGS pathogenesis is still largely undetermined. A preliminary key issue is whether symptoms are being induced by peptides derived from gliadin proteins or by non-gliadin parts, or by gluten contaminants, or by other wheat constituents, such as more protein or carbohydrates. With the rise of patients with NCGS, many studies are currently being undertaken to better understand what key aspects of gluten are causing the gastrointestinal discomfort felt by these patients after the consumption of wheat products. Unlike CD, NCGS patients do not suffer from villous atrophy or antibodies to tTG or EMA, but they do test positive to gliadin. Most of these patients report a long clinical history, mainly characterized by gastrointestinal symptoms that include abdominal pain and tenderness, irregular bowel habits: constipation or diarrhea or alternating bowel movements.

Many NCGS patients follow a diet similar to CD patients, avoiding all food products that contain gluten. By excluding gluten from their diet these individuals are making themselves more susceptible to micronutrient deficiencies. Studies have shown that the exclusion of gluten from the diet causes certain vitamin and mineral deficiencies such as calcium, vitamin D, magnesium, and selenium. Due to the lack of biological evidence of NCGS, many doctors do not counsel these patients on how to maintain a healthy diet while maintaining a GF lifestyle. Even though there are no serum biological markers for these patients, their symptoms of discomfort should not be neglected and they should receive nutritional counseling on how to maintain optimal micronutrient levels while living a GF lifestyle.

Statement of the Problem

With the rise of the NCGS population, in addition to the CD population, more GF food options that are nutritionally loaded need to be on the market to combat the deficiencies that this population might suffer from by following a GF diet. Before the U.S. agricultural industry bombarded the markets with white all-purpose flour, historically many cultures utilized non-wheat based flours to produce food products that are not only nutritionally sounds but pleasing to the palate as well. Whether a person follows a wheat-based diet or a GF diet, it should not deter him or her from being able to consume healthy, well-balanced meals. Given this current dilemma, there is a need to develop more culinary recipes that not only provide the NCGS population with adequate nutrition but will also satiate their cravings for gluten products.

Purpose Statement

The purpose of this book was to create a cookbook based on ancient grains for patients with NCGS, to provide them with healthy and tasteful gluten-free alternatives that they can easily prepare at home. Specifically, this project was divided into five different chapters based on the type of grain (amaranth, buckwheat, polenta, quinoa, brown rice); each chapter provides recipes using the specific grain for breakfast, lunch, and dinner options, followed by the micronutrient breakdown for each recipe.

Objectives

This project was aimed to meet multiple objectives to create a comprehensive cookbook based on five ancient grains. Objectives were to:

Review current literature to identify essential core topics to include and address;

Review existing cookbooks to identify essential core topics to include and address; Identify a concise and visually stimulating format with which to compile and present the recipes, and micronutrient breakdown for maximal effective use;

Develop a six-chapter cookbook based on the grains: amaranth, buckwheat, polenta, quinoa, and brown rice that can be utilized by patients with gluten sensitivity on a daily basis to provide them with GF recipes that they can reproduce at home;

Create an assessment tool for use in the evaluation of the designed cookbook as an educational tool.

Definition of Terms

Amaranth: Any plant of the genus Amaranthus, some species of which are cultivated as food and some for their showy flower clusters or foliage (Amaranth, n.d.).

Buckwheat: Buckwheat groats are hulled grains from the buckwheat plant often found in Eastern Europe and Russia.

Celiac disease: An autoimmune inflammatory condition of the small intestine, triggered by the ingestion of gluten in susceptible individuals.

Gliadin: General name for the proteins found in wheat (durum, emmer, spelt, farina, farro, kamut, and einkorn), rye, barley, and triticale.

Gluten: Name for the amino acid found in wheat (gliadin), rye (secalin), and barley.

Groat: Hulled grain broken into fragments larger than grits (Groat, n.d.).

Non-celiac gluten sensitivity: Problems caused by wheat and/or gluten ingestion, even though they do not have celiac disease or wheat allergy because they test negative both for CD-specific serology and histopathology and for immunoglobulin E-mediated assays.

Polenta: A staple in Northern Italian cooking, polenta is made from ground yellow or white corn that has had the germ removed. This gluten-free, complex carbohydrate has more protein than a large egg and is a great alternative to bread and pasta.

Pseudocereal: Any of several plants, as buckwheat and quinoa, that produce fruits and seeds, used as flour but are not of the grass family (Pseudocereal, n.d.).

Quinoa: An annual herb (Chenopodium quinoa) of the goosefoot family that is native to the Andean highlands and is cultivated for its starchy seeds which are used as food and ground into flour. It also contains all nine essential amino acids (Quinoa, n.d.).

Wheat allergy: An allergic