Comments (0)

By Fred, October 8, 2009 7:30 am

Going Global with the GFD

The Czech Republic is not a friendly place to visit for those of us who pursue the gluten free diet (”GFD”).  CD is not widely diagnosed. Flour is put in practically everything, and as I found out, literacy isn’t the highest even if you have a trusty “I’ve got CD and pursue the GFD cards.” (Thank you as always, to the people at www.celiactravel.com).

The search results in our Juno Nutrition food database when you look for products that are Czech. As always, we show an aggregate safety result in the Gluten Summary.

To prepare for the trip I went down to the local Czech restaurant, Klara’s, in Cary, NC. As usual, I went to visit around 2 in the afternoon, just the right time for management to still be around, but after the lunchtime rush so you can sit and talk. Klara had heard of CD and knew of the GFD for her customers, but hadn’t ever gone through her menu in detail. We spent about an hour going through each item on the menu. Klara was kind enough to tell me if which items were GF, which items would always contain gluten, and which items might be made to avoid gluten and how to ask for them.

We walked away with 66 products; 27 okay / 1 unknown / 28 avoid. It was extremely helpful and it led to my first trip to Praha and Liberec where there was no accidental gluten exposure.

Comments (0)

By Fred, October 7, 2009 7:30 am

There are lots of ways to be GF friendly - Aloft hotels has done a good job of making life easy with a really quick and simple plan.  They use microwave meals.  The hotels have small cafeterias with a microwave with nearby stocked freezers.  Many of those microwave meals are from Amy’s Kitchen. Tonight I ate the Palak Paneer, a personal favorite.

Aloft Hotels; Simple eating on the GFD

I love the elaborate GF preparations of a restaurant or hotel as much as the next traveling Celiac, however, what I really care about is having reliably safe and convenient food to eat. Sure, you could recreate this product offering by driving to a grocery store, and I’m not even sure if Aloft recognizes how helpful this is to those of us on the GFD, but every now and then the simple solution is just good enough.