Need guidance, about to go gluten free, dairy free

[Marissamom]

I'm about to take my family gluten free, dairy free. I need to know what to watch for on labels, and any advice on recipe resources etc. would be greatly appreciated, as I'm also trying to stay low soy, low nut, low egg, and am trying to keep our food spending down

[tanyalynn]

Most of the people in the forum are gluten and dairy free, often soy free as well, so the main recipe threads (check the Sticky at the top of the forum for the link to it) would be helpful.

For gluten: the obvious like wheat, barley, oats (usually x-con with wheat but the oat protein itself is very similar to gluten and causes problems for some in its own right), rye, spelt, triticale, probably a couple more... watch out for barley malt in some processed foods, it's not wheat so it's not declared.

Dairy--I *think* there's supposed to be bolding in the ingredients labels and/or a Milk declaration, but in general be suspicious of whey, caseinate (or anything that looks like casein). 

There are usually paleo/grain-free threads in Traditional Foods, sometimes in the main Nutrition Forum, and people add recipes/discussion there regularly.  In general there are quite a few gluten/dairy free people in Traditional Foods, searching old threads should be helpful for recipes and blog links.  The Chat thread has some recipe discussion, feel free to pop in.  Um.... The Garden of Eating is a grain and dairy free cookbook, by Matesz, all the recipes I've made so far are tasty, and although we're not grain free, it's easy to add a grain or other starch to a meal. 

[deminc]

We're off all these. The easiest for me was to scour the internet for recipes and buy a lot of whole food and alternative flours. We hardly have any processed food anymore because almost nothing fits. One resource would be the glutenfree goddess recipe blog. She's off many of the same things. Google it and you should find it. Download the recipes that you think will work for you and keep it in a handy file. Snacks and breakfasts were the hardest for me (or rather the kids), and life has been much better since we settled for some staples that they actually like and I can freeze in quantities. The next challenge was sauces and once we figured that out, my little one has been quite happy and eating heaps. Another useful resource would be the glutenfree girl website. She uses eggs but some recipes can be replicated with various egg replacements. 

The first couple of months were bewildering and stressful but it gets better after a while. We've been at it for half a year now and I'm actually starting to get compliments for the food now, even from people who are on a normal diet, thanks to all the generous folks on the internet putting out their recipes.