GLUTEN FREE AND ON A BUDGET
WANT TO TRY GOING GLUTEN FREE BUT CAN'T AFFORD SPECIALTY FOODS?
Many families crave the benefits of gluten-free living to help with disabilities or health concerns. However, they don’t succeed because the cost is too prohibitive. With a bit of planning, you can circumvent the costly specialty foods and live gluten-free on a low food budget.
1. Pick your battles. - Choose which specialty foods you will spend extra money on, and which you can live without. My family’s choices are gluten-free muffin and cake mixes, no-bake rice lasagne noodles, Bragg’s Liquid Aminos to replace soy sauce, and gluten-free snack bars and cookies for when we have not had time to make other “safe” treats.
2. Trade in your meat. - Healthy meat is costly, and inexpensive meat is usually fatty and/or contains gluten and preservatives. Consider other protein sources such as tofu, beans, lentils, and cheese. If you eat meat for dinner seven days out of the week, try modifying three of those to vegetarian meals.
3. Load up on in-season produce. - During the summer, buy corn on the cob, avacados, summer squash, juicy fruits and berries, and healthy greens. In the winter, eat broccoli, cauliflower, winter squash, apples and oranges, and carrots. Potatoes and bananas are available year-round, and yams and sweet potatoes offer the carbohydrate content with an extra boost of vitamins and flavor.
4. Do not impulse-shop. - Plan out what you will buy, and from what store. The money saved will be greater than the cost of gas and extra planning.
5. Go international. - Asian grocery stores contain a great variety of naturally-gluten-free items, at prices lower than supermarket chains. Rice noodles, bean thread noodles, tasty vinegars and green produce, and sauce mixes can add an excitement and taste to your diet. Many of the same products, prepared commercially for the American market and sold in supermarket chains, have gluten. Hispanic food also tends to follow the same rules. Tortillas and sauces manufactured for the Hispanic market are often gluten-free, while the same products made for an American market are unsafe.
6. Stay all-natural. - You don’t have to shop for the “all-natural” label on your food; in fact, that can end up costing you more. Buy brown and white rice, fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables, fresh meat cuts, and natural milk or soymilk, and prepare your food yourself.
7. Look at your schedule. - Cooking our food from scratch and avoiding unsafe convenience foods required about an hour more cooking time each day for us. To deal with that, I moved my workouts to the mornings so I could spend the extra cooking time at night. On weekends, I make gluten-free waffles and freeze them so I can use them as toaster waffles on school mornings.
8. Stretch it out. - Additional ingredients can make your expensive specialty mixes go farther. To one box of gluten-free muffin mix, which makes one dozen muffins, add the following: 1 can pumpkin puree, one tablespoon each cinnamon and nutmeg, two cups cooked quinoa grain (or other gluten-free whole grain,) one cup milk, an extra egg, one cup raisins, one cup almonds, and one cup peeled and chopped apples. The mix will then make about five dozen muffins and will be much healthier. Cool and freeze the muffins in freezer bags, then pull a few out and microwave them each time you want a healthy treat. Ingredients such as these can be added to pancake mixes and some cake mixes.
9. Believe in leftovers. - If you have anything left of a good gluten-free dinner, save it in freezer bags. Pick all remaining meat off rotisserie chickens and use later in soups. Plain rice can be frozen, then mashed and used as a thickener in stews and pasta sauces. Bones can be boiled to make a gluten-free broth. Fruit which is “a little past ripe” can be used in muffins and smoothies.
10. Study your environment. - Chain grocery stores may offer products similar to those at health food stores, but for less money. Restaurants such as P.F. Chang’s China Bistro are beginning to wise up to gluten-free concerns, and offer at least one safe option. Find which establishments offer gluten-free foods, and occasionally treat yourself to a night out. If you have no gluten-free restaurants available, do not be shy about carrying your own salad dressing or soy-sauce alternative, and ask the server refrain from the adding any commercially-prepared sauce to your food.
Do you have any other ideas we might add to our list? Experience matters!
Contact us!
Do you have food intolerances or a specific dietary choice?
The general acceptance that what is offered on the supermarket shelf is what we should be eating can be very wrong.
Possible symptoms of food allergies or intolerances
Can an elimination diet help your chronic condition?
Resources for dietary differences in the Reno/Sparks area
Online resources for dietary differences
Blackrock Wellness