CoAc­tive Health Book Review: Gluten-Free Girl

I like to keep track with things my read­ers and my clients are read­ing and like to give credit when I come across great work. A review for Gluten-Free Girl(affil­i­ate link), may seem odd com­ing from a 6’5″ guy from North­ern New Jer­sey, but keep in mind that most of my patients are women. I enjoy read­ing sto­ries about trans­for­ma­tion. I hope all of my prac­tice mem­bers may expe­ri­ence a trans­for­ma­tion by help­ing them con­tinue liv­ing a deli­cious life despite chronic disease.

Too many peo­ple are liv­ing with chronic con­di­tions that could respond to an elim­i­na­tion trial of some highly aller­genic foods such as dairy, wheat and soy. The clin­i­cal test­ing out there is often not sen­si­tive enough to cor­rectly diag­nose and screen for some of these dis­eases. Celiac diets are dif­fi­cult for many.

For instance, for Celiac dis­ease test­ing to be pos­i­tive, you already need 50% atro­phy (dam­age) to the micro­scopic folds in your small intes­tine that allow you to absorb nutri­ents. I have heard about too many cases where tests came back neg­a­tive, but these indi­vid­u­als were still hav­ing poten­tially seri­ous prob­lems with wheat!

When I first thought about how to describe Gluten-Free Girl, the first thing that came to mind was that it read like a love let­ter...a love let­ter to food.

Foods held dear to the heart can quickly become a night­mare — gluten sen­si­tiv­ity being a com­mon cul­prit. Shauna Ahern talks a bit about her early strug­gles and leads us through her trans­for­ma­tion to a gluten-free lifestyle. She clev­erly trick­les use­ful  recipes for you to try at home through­out her story — includ­ing delec­table treats when you find your crav­ings in an uproar. Shauna cre­ated the pop­u­lar and award-winning food blog, Gluten Free Girl and tweets at @glutenfreegirl.

What I give Shauna most credit for is how she devotes min­i­mal pages to neg­a­tive self-talk. The major­ity of the book focuses on all of the amaz­ing aspects of food that she began to cher­ish even more once she became gluten-free. She takes us through each stage of her trans­for­ma­tion from tears to tri­umph — but cel­e­brates her vic­to­ries more than she reflects on her failures.

Shauna has a knack for tak­ing fancy sound­ing recipes that you might see in a posh, Man­hat­tan restau­rant and brings them to our home kitchens. When most peo­ple think of a gluten-free diet, they’re think­ing rice cakes and raw veg­eta­bles. Shauna opens us to a world of “Quinoa Salad with Horse­rad­ish Creme Fraiche” , and how to make “Red Wine Reduc­tion Sauce” — enough to have me sali­vat­ing on the pages as I read.

Healthy cook­ing for me is typ­i­cally look­ing at what’s left in the refrig­er­a­tor and mak­ing some sort of con­coc­tion from it, but Shauna opens us to a world of high qual­ity cook­ing oils, salts, and spices. If you thought liv­ing a healthy life was bland, Gluten-Free Girl proves this to be a choice, not a necessity.

So if you’ve been recently diag­nosed with Celiac’s Dis­ease or you sus­pect that you may be sen­si­tive to gluten, save your­self some strug­gle and heartache and add Gluten-Free Girl (affil­i­ate link) to your bookshelf.