Terms and abbreviations matter, especially for CD and the GFD
We’ve spent a lot of time lately reading the scientific and medical literature around Celiac Disease (“CD”) and ways to improve conformance to specialized diets, particularly the Gluten Free Diet (“GFD”). We’ve always used GF to denote Gluten Free, however, we were pleased to see how widely these abbreviations were used across continents and scientific fields.
It’s essential to use consistent and precise language in everything we do here at Juno Nutrition because of all of the different fields and disciplines we work with. There are a lot of complex things in pursuing the GFD, the least we can do is use a common set of abbreviations. Terms like CD and GFD dominate the scientific and medical research literature that weighs on our health; we should do our best as a community to exercise the same consistency.
“If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.”
From The Analects of Confucius, Book 13, Verse 3 (James R. Ware, translated in 1980.)
GF Food, Gluten Free Recipes, Science of GF, Statistics
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CD, GFD, Glossary, Language, Research, Science, Terminology, Terms
The Gluten Free Gourmet was one of our first and favorite GF authors
We’ve been looking at the comments about The GFree Diet: A Gluten-Free Survival Guide by Ms. Elizabeth Hasselbeck and allegations of plagiarism. We’re not lawyers, but at first glance it doesn’t appear as if the charges have much merit. Looking at that case, it made us think of the books that we’ve included in our own library.
1. Wheat Free Worry Free by Ms. Danna Korn. This was my first book post diagnosis, I found it very helpful.
2. Let’s Eat Out! – The Allergy Free Passport. We purchased a general guidebook and two specific cuisine guides for Chinese Indian and Thai, as well as American Steak & Seafood and Mexican Cuisine Passport. We found the big book helpful, the smaller books less so. The smaller books were full of individual meal warnings that a product may have been cross contaminated or the recipe may have ingredient risk. This series has been well-recognized and it is clear that author Kim Koeller is committed to the franchise.
3. We’ve mentioned Triumph Dining in the past and think that is far as guidebooks go that drill down to specific locations, they are one of the best. Our library includes the 2nd Edition of their Grocery Guide as well as the 2nd and 4th editions of their Restaurant Guide.
4. One of our original favorite books was by Bette Hagman, The Gluten-Free Gourmet Cooks Fast and Healthy, who passed away several years ago. She was a longtime supporter of the Gluten Intolerance Group.
5. Gluten-Free Diet by Ms. Shelley Case was a gift that came at just the right point. It was maybe a year into the diagnosis when gluten-fatigue was beginning to way on us. For a great article talking about Celiac disease and the NYC blackout of August 2003, check out this article at Celiac.com.
6. We’d also picked up 125 Best Gluten-Free Recipes, which was an easy purchase given the delicious looking chocolate cake on the cover.
7. It may not be gluten-focused, but we’re also going to include Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution. It was while on a weight-loss driven diet that I noticed my dermal issues were going away. I would find out a few years later that I had DH, which regardless of your view of Dr. Atkins’ diet, will always make him smile from our view.
Are there any other GF books out there that you love? If so, please share them with us.
Dr. John Floros, head of the Department of Food Science at Penn State University and a member of the FDA’s advisory board, served as a moderator on a Nanotechnology in Food conference that we attended.
He made some interesting comments about Nanotechnology in food, which I will attempt to paraphrase:
Microbiology existed before we knew about it. We found out about these microbes 100 years ago, they caused a great debate in how we look at food but we did not stop eating. Food science is quantifying something that we already do every day, which is very different than information technology or other areas of study. Nanostructures exist in food already, how do we regulate and study new ones? How do we regulate their introduction?
This feels like a grandfathering issue. We are studying about something that we do every day. We learn more, but how do we apply that knowledge to practices that have existed for so long that they are part of our cultural wisdom? Should we challenge that conventional wisdom? These are significant cultural issues that are not easily addressed.
How often in the next year are you going to get sick through accidental gluten ingestion? What is it worth it to you to cut that number in half? What if we cut it to a tenth? What if instead of thinking in terms of accidental ingestions per year, it was per decade? Gluten is out there, it is going to find you. Vigilance is key, and part of our service to our customers is to provide you with the best statistical information possible about what products and locations you should avoid to increase the probability that you stay healthy.
There are lots of people like you. They are diligent about how they talk to restaurants, they call food manufacturers before eating packaged goods and when in doubt they will purchase an over-the-counter food test to make a final arbitration about the gluten status of a product. I personally kept a database that served as a precursor to our current product. The value of what we do at Juno Nutrition is that we allow the gluten free community to aggregate that data. If a location doesn’t give consistent responses about what is gluten free, then that is interesting information to have. If a gluten test gives a different indication about whether or not a product is GF than the food labeling, then that is important information to share.
Juno Nutrition is more than that – we are the advanced troops to helping restaurants understand what GF products are available. When they see that other restaurants are able to be GF with the same menu items, we move from debating whether or not a recipe can be created to knowing it is possible. We want a world where it is easy to avoid gluten and easy to find GF foods; Every day our entire team focuses on making that dream a reality.
The food industry is a wonderful thing. Having had the opportunity to work in and study many different industries, it is always the more mature, more entrenched industries that maintain a staggering diversity of supply chain components and businesses. Food is an old, old business.
It all starts at the farm. Crops are grown, animals are raised. After harvest, those components are created into ingredients. Some are primary ingredients; some are broken down and reformulated into flavorings and scents. These components are augmented by additives and preservatives and then either made into packaged goods to be sold at grocers or into materials sold to the restaurant industry. Every part of this supply chain has numerous players, numerous inputs and varying degrees of knowledge about their inputs and end products.
This is an amazingly complex system that comes together each day to keep all six billion of us fed. There are many points where gluten can be introduced into the supply chain, numerous ways of testing to ensure that the product does not have gluten and in the middle of this difficulty we’ve got to acknowledge that the gluten free population is amazingly tiny when compared to the six billion. That being said, there is hope and help. Food manufacturers understand this issue and as nutrition-addressable healthcare issues continue to arise, the need for accuracy and source-ability in their products continues to increase.
This isn’t an issue that can be resolved overnight, but with the right quantitative approach and long term view, it is an addressable issue.
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