I’m here to tell you a secret;  traveling is not all glamor.  Hard to believe, isn’t it?

I remember when my kids were little and my husband had to travel for work conferences.  I’d be exhausted when he came home and he had the nerve to be exhausted too!  How could that be when he’d had a hotel to go to sleep in, meals provided, banquets to attend, no children to wake him up in the middle of the night, no carting the kids back and forth between childcare plus work?  Now, I’ve discovered why as the shoe is on the other foot.

Because it is my company that I travel for, no one is planning my dinners for me at lovely restaurants when I’m away.   And, like many of you with food allergies and intolerances, I cart my own food with me so that I can eat safely and healthfully and try to book hotels with a microwave and fridge wherever I can.  I’ve been traveling so much in the last 3 months that I haven’t spent more than 10 days at home at a time.  At one point, I looked out of my plane at the city beyond and forgot where I was (Vancouver)!

So you might ask, why do I do it?   Here are the things that keep me going:

The eleven year old boy at the Canadian Celiac Association’s National Conference in Winnipeg who mowed through all of our samples once his mom had determined all of our products were safe for his Celiac disease, peanut allergies, egg allergies and dairy allergies.  What a smile on his face and his mom’s too!

The lady at Choices gluten free fair in White Rock who found out we’re free of sulfites and dairy.  She told me that she was in love with our company. 

The store owner who came up to our booth at the Canadian Health Food Association’s Expo West who said she can’t keep our Energy Explosion trail mix on the shelf, people love it so much.

The lady who’s been a customer for years who introduced herself at the Celiac Disease Foundation’s Annual Conference in Los Angeles in May.  It felt like I was meeting an old friend.

But it’s the same in all that we do isn’t it?  We handle all of the education and anxiety necessary to deal with our family’s food allergies and at times it can be really overwhelming.  We plough on, sometimes just putting our heads down and marching ahead because it’s really all we can do.  But then we get those moments of bright light; that small thing that may not mean much to someone not in our shoes but can mean the world to us.  A new safe product, a medical situation handled well, excitement over finding someone else who really “gets it”.

Small things – they’re really what makes the world go round.

Health Canada has said since 2007 that pure oats (no wheat, barley or rye contamination) are not only suitable for gluten free diets but recommended due to the B vitamins, fiber and iron they add to a gluten free diet.  Yet at the same time, Canadian labeling laws, last updated in the 1990’s don’t allow oats to be labeled or advertised as gluten free.  This is why you only see “gluten free” on our US site even though it’s the same product as Canada.

As part of the upcoming allergen labeling law changes, Health Canada has recognized that their recommendations and the labeling laws don’t match.  Two weeks ago they published a 20 page document about their intent to change the law regarding oats and are asking for feedback from Canadian consumers and the food industry.  For more information, check out the link at:  http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ahc-asc/media/advisories-avis/_2010/2010_75-eng.php

I had a friend who had an anaphylactic reaction to MRI dye last Monday.  In for an MRI to determine answers for a health issue, she had never before had an anaphylactic reaction to anything and had no food allergies.  Her only previous reaction to anything was a very swollen leg last year after a bee sting.

The scary part to me is what happened when she told the technician she was feeling funny and hit the panic button.  To be fair, MRIs and CAT scans are rather tight spaces and more than one patient has been known to have panic attacks so this was how she was initially treated.  A doctor was called in who took her vitals which appeared to be fine so she was led through breathing exercises to “calm down”.  When she began to have difficulty talking due to a swelling throat and tongue, they then noticed that her back was covered in hives.  This is when she asked, “Can’t you give me something to stop this?” Read more »

Just when Health Canada has recognized mustard as Canada’s 11th priority allergen, word is that mustard flour is a bacteria killer in processed meat products.  This might be good news for Canada’s beleagured processed meat industry after major recalls due to listeria over the last year that killed several people.

A recent study at the University of Manitoba and reported in Food in Canada shows that heat treated cold mustard powder used as a binder, not as a spice,  in meat products such as sausage will create toxins that kill off E.coli bacteria.  It’s a natural way to ensure that E.coli, a potentially life threatening bacteria when ingested, cannot contaminate our processed meats. Read more »

My husband and I just got back from Calgary yesterday after a quick trip to help support our best friends.  This trip has truly made me appreciate that our life is really pretty good; a feeling I hope to affect my perspective for some time.

It all started last Wednesday with a phone call from my friend Erica who was calling from the Children’s Hospital in Calgary after their daughter was flown to the hospital earlier in the week.  As of that Wednesday, they’d received a diagnosis of Stage 4 cancer.  I was blown away with the news, trying to listen to the details from Erica when all I wanted to do was cry.

We then arranged everything that night to fly to Calgary on the weekend to help support our friends while they dealt with their life changing completely in an instant.  My parents took our girls, my sister in Calgary arranged to pick us up at the airport and make one of their cars available to us for the weekend.  We cancelled all of our kids’ weekend activities and cancelled our previous plans to go away for the weekend with other friends.  It’s amazing how everyone was fantastic and supported us to make sure we could head out quickly.

On the Thursday before we left, we received the good news that the cancer had been identified as Hodgekins.  Hard to believe that good news is knowing what kind of cancer is present but Hodgekins has a very high recovery rate and it really was the best kind of cancer to hope for.

On the way to take our daughters to my parents and head out to the airport on Friday, we received a call from our alarm company that our house was being broken into and that the police were being dispatched to our house.  At first my husband and I just looked at each other in disbelief but then we started to laugh while our children in the back seat thought that we were cracking up.  But really… we were on our way to a situation that was so much bigger than the physical objects in our house.  We decided to laugh rather than rant and it turns out that it was actually just a false alarm.

In the end, we were thankful for our time with our friends and their daughters because while there were times to cry, there was a lot of laughter too.  It really drove home that despite dealing with food allergies in our house daily and the fear that can sometimes bring, we’re all  very lucky to be blessed with good health.  It’s all about perspective.

A recent study in Spain showed that the gut health of individuals on gluten free diets was worse than those not on gluten free diets.  The theory behind this study’s results is that when we remove gluten containing grains from our diet, we reduce the amount of food that probiotics (healthy bacteria in the gut) have to feed upon and stay healthy. 

This information doesn’t help those who have no choice in eating a gluten free diet such as those with Celiac disease and food allergies but should give those pause who go on a gluten free by choice without a direct medical need.  What can help the gut health of those who must be on the gluten free diet medically is to eat gluten free foods that are prebiotic (the “food” for those healthy probiotic bacteria).  Prebiotics are a type of fiber rich carbohydrate that are not as easy to digest as some kinds of foods.  Examples of prebiotics are:  oats (pure, gluten free oats, most – 95% of Celiacs - can tolerate these), inulin, resistant starches, gums, asparagus, bananas, artichokes, spinach, cranberries, garlic, onions and legumes such as chickpeas, lentils and navy beans.

If you are attending the Canadian Celiac Association Conference this weekend in Waterloo, please come by and visit me in Booth 37.  I’m then home for 3 days and then off to the Gluten Intolerance Group Conference in Seattle for June 4 and 5th.  Come see me there too!