Last week, I decided to experimentally give up gluten. My main reason is a little too much to go into, but I’ll basically say that it’s poo-related. It’s not a severe symptom, either, but something I’d rather do without. Thankfully Mark is always up to the challenge of figuring out ways to accommodate diets without sacrificing taste and flavor.

For the most part, eating at home has been easy, especially since we don’t eat a lot of glutenous foods anyway. There have only been a couple times where Mark has had to make something differently than usual. We do have a large stockpile of wheat-based flour to figure out what we’re going to do with if I do indeed have a sensitivity to gluten, though. Mark likes to bake here and there, so we’ve been buying all-purpose flour by the 25 lb bag at our local Costco.

Back to the diet, though: The biggest challenge has been dining out. My staple lunch used to be Subway, since it’s the only fast food within my office complex, and it’s the healthiest option within a mile of my office. I found that three of Wendy’s four new salads can be easily made without wheat products –the Spicy Chicken Cesar Salad is ok if you substitute the Ultimate Chicken Grill Fillet for the Spicy Chicken Fillet, the Baja and BLT Cobb are oky as-is, but the roasted pecans in the  Apple Pecan Chicken Salad contain wheat starch.(whaaaat??)

As for eating dinner out, sushi on Saturday evening was also a challenge. Why you ask? Soy sauce is a wheat product. My favorite casual eatery, Panera, is likely going to be out. It looks like I’ll be doing less dining out.

I’ve only given up gluten for 7 days, but oddly enough, there were three times when I believe I accidentally ingested trace amounts of gluten, and I was able to tell hours later. I’m not completely certain about this, but the Trader Joe’s 73% Cacao Super Dar Chocolate with Almonds bar that I have at my desk and have been eating a square at a time was made on equipment shared with wheat, milk, peanuts, other tree nuts, and soy. (Fortunately the Trader Joe’s Swiss 72% Cacao Dark Chocolate bar that I have here has a symbol that indicates that no gluten ingredients were used, but it was manufactured at a facility that processes wheat and eggs… should be ok, right? I think so.)

As I mentioned, this is an experiment. I’m planning to keep away from gluten for another week or two and then eat a normal amount for the following week to see if my symptoms return. If they do, I’ll be mentioning all of this to my doctor at the end of that week.

We’ll see where this goes!