Avoid:
- Most commercial bread products and pastas, including muffins, pancakes, rye bread, corn bread, noodles, dumplings, crackers. Semolina, durum, triticale, and graham are types of wheat and also need to be avoided.
- Check all cereals for flour or whole wheat
- Flour tortillas
- Regular soy sauce (Kikkoman, teriyaki, etc.) has wheat
- Suspect all sauces, gravy, thickened soups, stews, and chili
- Foods with any kind of battering or coating. Fried chicken, shrimp, egg rolls, and even some French fries (coated ones) need to be avoided. Many fish and chicken entrees are lightly dusted with flour before cooking.
- Miscellaneous items to check: ice cream, potato chips, corn chips, rice cakes, spices, alcohol – especially beer, extracts with added alcohol, processed meats including sandwich meat, marinades
- Modified food starch
If in doubt, ask your waiter to check for you!
Substitute:
- Spelt bread or any spelt products, 100% rye bread, 100% millet, amaranth, rice, or tapioca bread. Kamut flour is also a wonderful substitute
- Pastas include spelt, rice, amaranth, corn, and quinoa
- Puffed rice, oats, cornmeal, kamut flakes, buckwheat
- 100% corn tortillas, spelt tortillas
- Wheat free tamari
- Use cornstarch, potato starch, tapioca flour, or a wheat free flour as a thickener
- Grilled foods are usually wheat free as are some stir fry entrees
Note: oats rye, barley, and spelt are often OK but should be tested for reactivity in people who are wheat allergic because they contain similar or identical proteins as found in wheat.