Thoughts on organic diet vs gluten free?

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I'd be really interested to hear from anyone who's tried gluten free and/or organic diets and your opinions on my thought bubble.

Bear with me with a little background?

Every now and then, when I've been having a hard time with illness and mental health and seemingly escalating autistic issues, I ponder whether there might be a dietary solution. The trouble is, I'm really not one to engage in diets (especially the strict types that cut out whole food groups). It's a combination of lacking time and energy, the need to cook meals acceptable to my kids, plus a natural skepticism as to whether benefits are anything more than a placebo effect. Plus, you know, coffee and doughnuts.

Anyway, I was feeling bad enough to consider what would be involved in cutting gluten (often mentioned as an autism treatment for kids) - but it all seemed so hard. No wheat, rye, oats, bread, pasta, biscuits... Besides which, it always seems a bit weird that so many of us should be suffering from gluten sensitivities, when our forebears had no such issues - and our cultural cuisine was based on a 'healthy' dose of daily bread.

With a bit of reading and further consideration, I'm wondering if the main culprit might in fact be pesticide residues? Isn't it the case that a lot of pesticides act as neurotoxins? Nowadays we know that the gut is like a 'second brain' and produces even more neurotransmitters, so it's easy to imagine that pesticide residues in food might affect it badly. Are these the root cause of the modern malady of 'leaky gut', which is allowing those nasty glutens and caseins into our systems?

So here is my thought bubble. Maybe by eating organic produce as far as possible, and in particular organic staples like bread and pasta, this could prevent 'leaky gut' - in which case I could still enjoy bread and milk (aka coffee and doughnuts) - in organic form.

Or is this just wishful thinking?
Discuss...

Gluten free and organic diets more expensive than otherwise

Some articles claim that a lot of autistics have Celiac disease (gluten free, casein free)

Not all autistics have Celiac disease

If you want you can get a blood test and it will show if you are allergic to casein

You need to do more research into what these diets actually are and be very, very thorough about it. For example the leaky-gut connection (they say) has to do with the type of wheat we cultivate these days, so an organic version might not necessarily prevent leaky-gut.

Also, the pesticide/herbicide thing could be a factor, yes, look up Monsanto's Roundup and the Glyphosate that could be causing coeliac disease. Monsanto is an evil company.

The best advice I can give you (I am not an expert) is to read up about every single ingredient on the ingredients list that you don't understand (and do understand). For instance, on "organic" tea they add artificial flavourings (Some of which I react to) and it makes it bad for me. I'm not gluten intolerant but have allergies to preservatives. They do not always list preservatives on food labels.

Also, don't buy cheap bargain food if you want to avoid all the crap they put into it, including other rubbish not listed in the ingredients list.

Also, Calcium Propionate (A fungicide or what they call a mould inhibitor) reaction could be mistaken for gluten intolerance. They spray bread with it. I react even to longlife bread without this preservative, but in a different way. I have no idea what they do to longlife bread (such as wraps) that makes me react to it. I do not react at all to fresh white bread.

It's been my understanding that we are eating different(/modified) grains to what our ancestors were eating. Genetic engineering of crops has existed for as long as humans have been farming.

I get brain fog, tiredness and a digestive reaction to gluten. I'm intolerant, not allergic, so I keep eating a small amount of regular foods so that I dont become overly sensitive to gluten.
Organic is good from an ethical perspective, but sometimes its an exclusive type of food, due to the cost.

All types of rice, including sticky glutinous rice, is gluten free.

I've eaten mostly rice because of it is easy to store in large quantities and cook in small quantities.

I'll buy a loaf of delicious French bread and binge on it so I don't waste it.
I don't notice any health issues from doing that, so maybe I'm different?
Or maybe it doesn't have any nasty preservatives? Who knows?

As a kid I used to eat sourdough bread all the time. So maybe that has affected my gut?
I do know that my mother's side of the family seems rather autistic. They don't have big parties like my father's side.
They had jobs like seamstress, medical technician, and airplane mechanic. No managers or people jobs.

Have you considered making your own bread? That way you would have a better idea of what is in it.
A little exercise from kneading bread may be helpful if you have a sedentary jobs like many.

Organic food is produced by methods that supposedly comply with practices that recycle resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity.  Organizations regulating organic products may restrict the use of certain pesticides and fertilizers as well.  Foods labelled "Organic" or "Organically Grown" have the same nutritional value as "non-Organic" foods, but are often more expensive.

A gluten-free diet (GFD) is a diet that strictly excludes gluten, which is a mixture of proteins found only in wheat, spelt, kamut, triticale, barley, rye, and oats -- no other plant or animal products contain gluten unless they also contain these grains!  You can find products such as bottled water, rice, coffee, and canned fruit labelled "Gluten Free".

In the strictest sense, if you need these types of diets (and only a licensed and appropriately-trained medical professional can determine this), then your health and well-being might be improved by an "Organic / Gluten-Free" diet; but keep in mind that food producers often slap these label on their products for one of two reasons:

1) Foods labelled "Organic" or "Gluten-Free" (most of which are naturally so) can be sold at a higher price than their unlabeled counterparts -- an "Organic / Gluten-Free" carrot can sell for 20% more than an ordinary carrot, and each will otherwise be indistinguishable from the other.

2) Grade-B foods can be made more appealing to the consumer by labeling them "Organic / Gluten-Free".  Keep this in mind when you have to choose between those fat, unblemished, and brightly-orange ordinary carrots and the twisted, spotted, scrawny carrots in the "Organic / Gluten-Free" produce section.

It's all a scam.

Organic foods can be cheaper if you live alone, as they are sold in smaller quantities and may have a cheaper price than a large bag of something you can't eat before it spoils.

It helps to either grow your own veggies and/or live near a veggie farm.  The only things I really have to worry about with my backyard patch are the neighborhood cats using my garden for a litter box.

Yes, I always rinse the veggies thoroughly before using them.

Another thing you could look into with regard to bread/bread products is the Chorleywood Bread Process and other such methods of large scale fast bread production: whether the bread produced by these methods is properly digestible by all humans has been questioned.
Although I must stress at this point I don’t know whether the questioning is justified: anecdotally all shop-bought bread gives me indigestion, but my own home-made doesn’t

^ That brings up a good point: Just because a commercially-made product is labelled "Organic / Gluten-Free" does not mean that it actually is.

The USFDA allows for certain maximum levels of gluten in "Gluten-Free" foods, and "Organic" foods may have been grown with pesticides, herbicides, and artificial fertilizers in all but the last few months before they were harvested.

If you want to be 100% certain that the food you eat is organically-grown and free of gluten, then you must grow and prepare it yourself.

I discovered by accident that I'm exactly the same way and it's also causing inflammatory issues for me, even when I bake my own bread and make my own pasta.

I would recommend the OP to try eliminating gluten for a while and see how she feels. You can use rice; pure oats and buckwheat are also gluten-free. Find a good source in order to avoid contamination.

Smudge also made some excellent points: do your research and carefully consider the ingredients in your food. In the rare occasions when I eat highly processed food, I feel the effects instantly.

Just looked up the Chorleywood method on Wikipedia: apparently the introduction of modern mass-baking methods led to the breeding of new varieties of wheat to suit these processes which are distinct from the varieties under common cultivation even as recently as the 1920s-40s.
In particular these new strains have much higher levels of protein than former ones, gluten is the principle protein in wheat.
Hmmm...

Gluten gives bread its chewy texture and "yummy" flavor.  Without gluten, bread would be more like rice-cakes -- those dry, crunchy, flavorless, abrasive hockey-pucks that scream for something to be put on them to make them fit for human consumption.

Gluten is not evil; but people who try to demonize gluten for everyone else are.

Good gluten development is essential for making quality dough and a tasty finished product.

Most people have no problems with gluten and I can tolerate it in moderation, especially if I make my own stuff from quality ingredients.

As far as I'm concerned, anybody who wastes their time hectoring others about what they should eat or do with their personal life is an a***hole

Hmm ... I wonder if I can sic HR on the co-worker who criticizes my choice of microwaveable burritos...

Including so-called Nutritionists. They're full of rubbish and don't know what they're talking about (From my personal experience with two: One was a friend of a friend, the other paid for). If you want diet advice, ask a dietician. They are qualified and not filled with candida diet nonsense. I had a nutritionist lecture me about diet even though she made assumptions about certain foods (i.e. That all Waitrose branded food wouldn't have additives in them) cos she was arrogant. She kept forgetting what allergies I had and sent me recipes including them as part of the main ingredients. She also told me, "I don't know what autism is but it's no excuse for you not to work". She never "cured" me of my "candida". It turned out in the end my bad eczema was an allergic reaction to eggs, not candida like both nutritionists said.

Rant over.