Protect the Gluten Free Community

Dear Celiac Sisters and Brothers,

This is in response to the impending rule to be passed down from the FDA in regards to the “Safe Threshold” of gluten in the foods base on the PPM European standards in late September 2012! It is the heart felt belief that our legislatures and the governmental agency charged with protecting the citizens currently do not care or understand the severity of the Gluten issues in this Country.

Senator Orrin Hatch Federal District Law Suit:
Timothy W. Lawson is heading up a lawsuit against US Senator Orrin Hatch for miss-use of Federal Tax dollars. Hatch sits on the Appropriations Committee that approves and assigns funding for the various branches of the US Government including but not limited to Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration. It is my personal belief that the 20 ppm is not a safe threshold to ingest for those that have Celiac’s disease or Non Celiac Gluten Intolerance. Every time Mr. Lawson has spoken to the FDA they have responded by saying that, “…We do not have the funds to do testing to verify that the European Standard of 20ppm is a safe threshold. If Senator Hatch cared about the people he represents then it would stand to reason, that he would insist on some of those tax dollars go for true medical testing so that an honest and legitimate threshold could be reached and agreed upon. No such offer or consideration has been or is forth coming. That is what the courts are for.

FDA National Class Action Suit for TRUTH in Labeling
Timothy W. Lawson has begun gathering names all over the US, of plaintiffs to join a national class action suit against the FDA. The purpose is to require FDA to have truth in Labeling. If the manufacturing companies in the US don’t have to make their products Gluten Free to Label it Gluten Free then, those people that have to eat gluten Free because of medical necessity (some 6 million people) then their lives will be put in harm’s way. It is not the mandate of the FDA to put lives in harm’s way but the opposite. They are to safe guard the public’s health by proper labeling so that the public at large can be informed as to what they are ingesting. On numerous occasions Mr. Lawson has spoken with the FDA and has found that they are willing to accept the European Standard without reservation even though they have no medical documentation to substantiate that the 10-20 etc… PPM is truly a safe threshold and will not cause an auto-immune response in the members of the Gluten Free Community. Based on statistical data gathered, there are over 9,000,000 or more people that have some form of Celiac’s Disease in the United States. This is an enormously large group of people. It is the personal heartfelt belief of Mr. Lawson that the FDA knows that the European Standard is not truly safe thereby allowing some nine million of his Sisters and Brothers to suffer needlessly. This is a call to action. We have the right to know what is in the food that we eat. We are not asking the manufactures to make gluten free products only require them to be honest on the FDA label what truly is in the products.

Timothy W. Lawson
CEO / Founder
New Grains Gluten Free Bakery LLC

766 East 2950 North
Provo, Utah 84604
(801) 687-5151 MB#
tim@newgrains.com

“Certified Gluten Free”
Changing peoples lives One “Loaf” at a time!

Gluten Free Cookie Giveaway for Celiac Awareness

 May 2012 is Celiac Disease / Gluten Intolerance Awareness Month! We thought it would be fun to help spread the word by playing a game! Are you in?! This one is easy!

Just refer 10 of your friends to our Facebook Page (http://www.facebook.com/newgrains) and have them add a comment that you referred them. Ends May 15, 2012. They do not need to eat gluten free to like our page and comment. If they don’t, they probably know someone who does. Each person can only enter a comment that they were referred by one person. Our goal this month is awareness! Thanks for being a part!

Let us know when reach your 10 and we will send you a yummy assortment of gluten free cookies! You can post a message on our facebook page or you can email us at roxanne@newgrains.com  You can view our website at www.newgrains.com

Good luck and THANKS for spreading the word! YOU continue to be the BEST part of New Grains!

Holiday Gluten Free French Toast Recipe

Well, we call this the holiday french toast , but I use it all throughout the year. So good.

Ingredients:

6 slices of New Grains Cinamon Raisin Bread

4 whole large eggs

1/4 cup almond milk

1 tsp Cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp Vanilla
Directions: Crack the eggs in a shallow dish/bowl, add almond milk, Vanilla, Cinamon and nutmeg. Mix very well. Heat pan to medium and put small amount of butter in pan for non-stick application. Place first slice of New Grains Cinamon Raisin Bread into the mixture. Let set for 10 seconds then turn over for 10 seconds. Remove the slice of bread and cook evenly to a light brown color on both sides of the slice. Serve with your favorite toppings, jams or jellies!

Enjoy!

Gluten Free Means Gluten Free

I posted this on the FDA Docket. Most people are willing to settle, because we within the Celiac Community have suffered for so long because we can’t trust the labeling practices that we have become submissive and desensitized to this cause. Currently New Grains is the largest and fastest growing GF Commercial Bakery in Utah. Within the Year we will be Nationwide. I would invite you to read my proposal and then realize that there is a way to get 0 ppm in our foods. But, it takes time, research and diligence on our part not to settle but to demand that our public servants give us what we deserve, “Truth in Labeling!” My nephew has a server peanut allergy. If he gets 20 ppm of peanuts in his diet he will swell up, stop breathing and die. The only difference is we die slower than my nephew. Let’s not give up and settle for something when we as a Nation deserve more.

Within this Country we have the Right to; Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We all with Celiac’s disease know that if the FDA allows people to label Gluten Free on their food and we do have a reaction, then our Government has taken our Liberties away.  According to the Mayo Clinic my condition of Celiac Sprue is terminal. The reason they gave me is because the damage was so extensive that my body cannot recover. They said, “The damage is extensive, irreversible, and progressive.” “We can’t stop it even if you do go to a gluten free diet it will only slow it down.” “You will be in pain the rest of your natural life and it will get worse in the years to come until you body finally give in and you die!” Now I didn’t like this and went for many years in denial. But, everything they had said has come true. My pain level on a scale of 1-10 is usually a 5. The more I push myself the more the Auto-Immune diseases that are in my body push back. Now with early onset Dementia, MS, DDD, Fibromyalgia and a few other things, I have accepted my reality and now fight to save those that don’t have to suffer my fate.

The truth is we truly do not know what 20 ppm over a long time frame will do to us. There is no real legitimate studies as of yet nor will there unless we stand tall and demand that the minimum acceptable level is the level that we can test at which is 10 ppm. This is where the threshold must be set because this is life or death, and the quality of that life, which I no longer have. I am a Father of 7 beautiful children. 5 of the 7 have Celiac Sprue as do I. I will not allow my children to suffer as I do every day. A very smart man once said, “you have no rights  unless you exercise them!” I have the right to live gluten free. I have the right to trust the labeling from the FDA and I have the right to protect my children and others that are unwilling to put their very lives in the care of large companies that only care about profits and acceptable losses.  There is no acceptable losses in this fight. NONE! In Asia, Africa, South America, and many other places people with Celiac’s Disease are dying every year never knowing why.

May I make a recommendation. Reconsider your position. We are talking about, “Acceptable Loss of Life” with the labeling protocol now in front of us. Every study that I have ever looked at always reads, “The majority of..,” “A large part of..,” or “Most people with celiac..” So, of the 2+ million people in this Country that have Celiac Sprue, only most, the majority,  or a large part of them have the God given right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happines? If so, then who gave us the authority to decide that the needs of the (Most, Majority, Large Part) are more valuable than the minority? How many must be sick, how many must die before we stop and take a look at this rule with true honesty?

As a business man I understand the cost involved in being below 10 ppm. However, I am willing to set that standard for my company so that I know that I was part of the solution not part of the Problem. I appeal to you integrity, and common sense. Life is very simple so long as it is honest and true. Let’s not allow honesty to be pushed aside while that are still other options at our disposal. Continue to stand strong for those that don’t have a voice that can’t stand on their own. Be part of the solution not the perpetuation of the Problem. NO means NO!

Timothy W. Lawson 

Findings from Study on Celiac Sprue

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center recently began major research and study on Celiac Sprue. Since Celiac Sprue is an autoimmune disease causing the body to stop absorbing nutrition, a whole host of problem can, may and will ensue.
According to the Beth Israel Deconess Medical Center website, symptoms of Celiacs vary a great deal:

Common manifestations of celiac sprue include:

Common Features

Adults

• Iron-deficiency anemia [a decrease in red blood cell number due to insufficient amounts of iron absorption and/or to chronic bleeding from the gastrointestinal tract]
• Diarrhea

Children

• Diarrhea
• Failure to thrive [decrease in weight or inability to gain weight, loss of appetite]
• Abdominal Distension [bloating of the belly]

General features

• Short stature
• Delayed Puberty

Gastrointestinal features

• Recurrent aphthous stomatitis [inflammation in the mouth causing small ulcers to form]
• Recurrent abdominal pain
• Steatorrhea [fat in the bowel movement]

Extraintestinal Features

• Folate-deficiency anemia [a decrease in red blood cell number due to insufficient amounts of folate]
• Osteopenia or Osteoporosis [a decrease in bone mass due to insufficient calcium absorption]
• Dental-enamel hypoplasia [sub-optimal production of tooth enamel]
  Vitamin K deficiency
• Hypertransaminasemia [elevated enzymes levels in the blood]
• Thrombocytosis [overproduction of platelets]
• Arthralgia [pain in the joints]
• Arthropathy [inflammatory joint disease; i.e. arthritis] 
• Polyneuropathy [disease of the nerves]
• Ataxia [defective muscular coordination; manifested when voluntary muscular movements are attempted]
• Epilepsy [seizures]
• Infertility
• Recurrent abortions
• Anxiety and depression
• Follicular Keratosis [a skin problem]
• Alopecia [hair loss from the scalp] 
• Hyposplenism [poor function of the spleen which can increase risk/severity of infection]

Associated Conditions

Definite Associations:

• Dermatitis herpetiformis
• IgA deficiency
• Type I diabetes
• Autoimmune thyroid disease 
  • Common symptoms of autoimmune thyroid diseases
    • You may experience autoimmune thyroid diseases symptoms daily or just once in a while, if at all. At times, any of these symptoms may be severe:
      • Constipation
      • Dry skin
      • Fatigue
      • Goiter (enlargement of the thyroid gland)
      • Hair loss
      •  Joint stiffness
      •  Missed menstrual periods
      • Unexplained weight gain

 

• Symptoms that might indicate a serious condition
  • In some cases, autoimmune thyroid diseases can be serious and should be evaluated in an emergency setting. Seek immediate medical care if you, or someone you are with, have any of these serious symptoms including:
    • Depression
    • Facial swelling
    • Unexplained weight gain

·          Sjögren’s syndrome 

• Although the hallmark symptoms are dry eyes and dry mouth, Sjögren’s may also cause dysfunction of other organs such as the kidneys, gastrointestinal system, blood vessels, lungs, liver, pancreas, and the central nervous system. Patients may also experience extreme fatigue and joint pain and have a higher risk of developing lymphoma.
• Microscopic Colitis
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Down’s syndrome
•  IgA nephropathy

 

Possible Associations:

·          Recurrent pericarditis

·           Sarcoidosis

·          Cystic Fibrosis

·          Fibrosing Alveolitis

·           Lung Cavities

·           Pulmonary Hemosiderosis

·           Inflammatory Bowel Disease

·          Autoimmune Hepatitis

·           Primary Biliary Cirrhosis

·          Addison’s Disease

·          Systemic Lupus erythematosus

·          Vasculitis

·          Polymyositis

·          Myasthenia gravis

·          Schizophrenia

·          Congenital Heart disease 

• Heart defects and autoimmune myocarditis in fetuses and newborns has also been associated with Celiac Disease in the mother, but more literature is available linking maternal Lupus with infant heart defects.  However, Celiac Disease can easily be and often is a misdiagnosed as lupus (see Gluten Sensitivity Masquerading as Systemic Lupus Erythematosus).  Celiac Disease or gluten sensitivity may generally underlie of accompany many cases of SLE.

·          Brain/Developmental Disorders

• Downs Syndrome is associated with maternal folate dificiencty. Asperger Syndrome is associated with gluten intolerance and brain development problems in the womb.  But, unlike Autism in which the patient’s own food intolerances play a large role, Asperger Syndrome may be largely affected by the mother’s food intolerances during pregnancy.  Much the same may be said of ADHD, which itself may generally be the result of the mothers untreated food sensitivities and aggravated by the child’s food sensitivities.

Complications

• Refractory Sprue
• Enteropathy-associated T-Cell lymphoma
• Carcinoma of the oropharynx, esophagus and small bowel [cancer of the stated organs]
• Ulcerative jejunoileitis
•  Collagenous Sprue

Recommended Physicians

If you find yourself showing symptoms of celiac disease, don’t hesitate to get yourself tested! Too many people are unwittingly killing themselves by continually consuming the very gluten that is there downfall. From research, we know that 1 in 133 Americans have celiac, which may seem like slim odds, but for those who have a first-degree relative diagnosed with celiac disease, as many as 1 in 22 people may have the disease. 

While the Mayo Clinics offer a test for celiac disease, I recommend seeing Mark E. Johnson, a specialist in holistic and homeopathic testing, about a possible gluten intolerance. Through his feedback testing, Mark can tell you exactly what you might be allergic to.

Mark E. Johnson- Homeopathic Testing           

Mark Johnson, the friend, scientist, and chemist is the man who, through his feedback testing, was the first to diagnose me with Celiac Sprue/Gluten intolerance. When first we met, Mark was sure I was dead man walking; I just hadn’t lain down yet. I was feeble, pale and pasty, on oxygen full time, walked with a cane, had extreme difficulty in expressing myself in a coherent fashion. I had trouble remembering simple words, phrases, or thoughts that to the normal person was be as effortless as breathing. I struggled to stand or sit for longer than 10 minutes at a time. The murky and dark clouded pools I once called my brain had seemed to have abandoned me for the first time since I was slapped on the butt by the Doctor when I was pulled from my warm comfortable womb inside my mother and forced into this world. Mark stood by my side and never gave up: conducting what must have been hours of research, searching for the elusive answers of how to save my life. Through the miracle of science, technology, ancient Chinese medicine and his tenacious drive to solve this riddle I now am on the path to healing, all be it still fraught with pain, lulls, and challenges.

Phone Number

(801) 434-9490

Address

930 S. State St

Orem, Utah 84097

Dr. Uma Karnam 

As a gastroenterologist, Dr. Umaprasanna Karnam MD, GI is a specialist when it comes to helping patients with problems of the digestive system. He is a fantastic doctor: very intelligent and proactive when it comes to diagnosis and finding treatment and remedies, as well as a wonderful caretaker: he as his staff are compassionate and prompt. You can really tell that he’s dedicated to you and your health.

Once I knew what to look for (thanks to Mark), I went to Dr. Karnan,  the renowned top in his field of Gastricenterologist in the State of Utah. Uma was able to medically determine a prognosis, treatment plan and a long term solution that would be preferable over death. Uma’s first words to me when we met were as he took my hand cupped with his, and with all the sincerity of a human being, softly said, “Don’t worry my brother, we will get you better!”

                Wow! What a novel approach. He was offering to heal me, not give me medication, send me to a physiatrist, or send me to yet another highly educated but still ignorant intern that neither cared or understood what I was going through. For two and a half years and test after test, the scope narrowed till we at long last arrived to the point that just medical science and tests could take me no further.

Phone & Fax Numbers

801-563-5121 (Office)
435-776-3499 (Park City Office)
801-566-3926 (Fax)

West Jordan address

3584 West 9000 South Suite 300
West Jordan, UT 84088

Salt Lake City address

24 South 1100 East Suite 103
Salt Lake City, UT 84102

Park City address

1665 Bonanza Drive
Park City, UT 84068

Email

support@gutwhisperer.com

Hope this helps!

-Tim

Gluten Free Cooking with Tim Lawson

Tomorrow, Tuesday August 8, Tim Lawson, owner of New Grains Gluten Free Bakery will be teaching a  FREE cooking class at Provo Macey’s Little Theater!

Join us for a delicious gluten free breakfast class! Tim is a one-of-kind character who knows his way around the kitchen and knows how to vamp up gluten free cooking.

Right now, Macey’s doesn’t hold many gluten free classes because not many people show up. If we start getting bigger turn outs, we’ll be able to hold classes more frequently and share more of our gluten free tricks and tips!

We will be doing gluten free french toast with a twist as well as belgian waffles.

Where: Provo Macey’s Little Theater
1400 North State St
Provo, UT 84601

When: August 9, 2011 at 7pm

FDA “Gluten-Free” Proposal: Why 20 PPM is NOT Acceptable

FDA Releases Safety Assessment on Gluten and Celiac Disease and Reopens Comment Period on “Gluten-free” Proposed Rule

August 2, 2011

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today reopened the comment period for its 2007 proposed rule that stated that one of the criteria for food labeled as gluten-free is that they could not contain 20 ppm or more of gluten.  In the proposed rule, the FDA is committed to performing a safety assessment of gluten exposure in people with celiac disease (CD). FDA has completed a health hazard assessment concerning gluten (PDF, 462KB), which includes the safety assessment, and a report about this work (PDF, 292KB) was also released today.

(Find directions for posting your own comments Here)

I have looked over the proposed rule on the acceptable amount of gluten that a person with Celiac Disease can have in one’s diet before there is any harm to their bodies. I read the 20 ppm amount which to a person that does not have Celiac seems 100% reasonable. After all, our bodies can tolerate varying levels of many different toxins such as arsenic, radiation, lead, heavy metals, contaminated waters, PM 10 from factories and large commercial vehicles etc — Our bodies are incredibly resilient and are able to process many things to protect its self.

So let me ask you a question: What if it was your son, daughter, or husband, niece, nephew, mother, father, had Celiac Sprue? How would you feel if the Food and Drug Association had been paralyzed for years over the issue of how much gluten was acceptable for your loved one to eat? How comfortable would you be if there was no scientific documentation to support, “to a medical certainty”  that  the “acceptable” 20, 100, 200, or even 1000 ppm  of gluten  in the food you bought wasn’t going to hurt your children, husband or your family. How would you feel?

If you would like an example of one woman who found herself up to her neck in this very scenario, simply read my wife’s story.

According to their website, the FDA’s origins can be traced back to the appointment of Lewis Caleb Beck in the Patent Office around 1848 to carry out chemical analyses of agricultural products, a function that the newly created Department of Agriculture inherited in 1862. Though its name and functions morphed and shifted over the years, its purpose has remained the same: to protect the public from companies or individuals making false claims about the quality or contents of their food and later their cosmetics, and medical devices.

Only in 1906 did the government create a law dictating the make up of commercial products, a law which hopefully, “would put a stop to food adulteration and quack remedies — the two major evils and targets of a 20-year crusade for federal regulation of foods and drugs.”

However, this first act contained many gaps and problems — such as the clause stating that a defendant had only to show that he personally believed in his fake remedy to escape prosecution. In 1937 the FDA went on a mission to close these gaps and fix what had been previously badly broken for over three decades.

“With the election of Franklin Roosevelt and the death in 1930 of the embodiment of the 1906 act–Wiley–the FDA now had a receptive ear to petition for needed changes in the law: legally mandated quality and identity standards for foods, prohibition of false therapeutic claims for drugs, coverage of cosmetics and medical devices, clarification of the FDA’s right to conduct factory inspections, and control of product advertising, among other items. A new generation of muckraking journalists and consumer protection organizations aided in pushing a reluctant Congress to sponsor a bill to replace the old law. The FDA itself exemplified the state of affairs in the marketplace by assembling a collection of products that illustrated shortcomings in the 1906 law. It included Banbar, a worthless “cure” for diabetes that the old law protected; Lash-Lure, an eyelash dye that blinded many women; numerous examples of foods deceptively packaged or labeled; Radithor, a radium-containing tonic that sentenced users to a slow and painful death; and the Wilhide Exhaler, which falsely promised to cure tuberculosis and other pulmonary diseases. A reporter dubbed this exhibit “The American Chamber of Horrors,” a title not far from the truth since all the products exhibited were legal under the existing law” (U.S. Food and Drug Administration: FDA History – Part Two)

 Such was the birth of The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

Once again we as the American Public must put our faith and hope in the FDA! You can not condone 20ppm of Gluten for the community that has Celiac anymore than the FDA could allow the continued use of Banbar, Wilhide Exhaler, eyelash dye that blinded many women; numerous examples of foods deceptively packaged or labeled; or a radium-containing tonic that sentenced users to a slow and painful death – The latter which  we could compare to the Gluten issues we all face now. Although Gluten is not radioactive like radium is, it will have a similar affect on a person.

Let me share with you my fate as told to me by the top doctors of the Mayo Clinic in Arizona.

After a week of poking and prodding, testing, x-rays, blood test, stress tests, MRI’s, CT Scans etc… the doctor finally was ready to speak to me about the results. He walked in, sat down stared at me and said, “Your Screwed!”

Uh..is that a medical term?

He went on to say, “because you were misdiagnosed for so long the damage to your body is extensive, irreversible, and progressive!!!”

I understood the first two it was the last one I was curious about. I was told that my Celiac had been put into motion and that it had in so way caused a sequence of events to occur that could not be stopped. (even eating Gluten free). He said that I would be in pain the rest of my life and eventually my organs would just start to shut down and I would die. Now we all die but the Doctor was quick to point out that my life would be shortened considerably.

My first thoughts were of my 7 children and wife at home worrying about their father and how I could POSSIBLY deliver the news.

“Hi kids, Daddy’s skrewed.”

Fortunately, I happen to have the most amazing wife and children in existence, who not only supported their ‘skrewed’ father but helped him start a bakery. 

Now, I am on oxygen every night and sometimes carry it with me. (I should carry it full time but I feel that I look so pathetic and sickly with it I leave it at home.) I fall down stairs and go through the wall at the base. I’ve gotten lost in my own neighborhood twice and got disoriented many times in the parking lot not knowing how I got there. My back is in pain always on a scale of 1-10 I live at a 5 with pain medication of which I hate to take. I have incontinence on a weekly basis and I forget to do simple things like take a pan of boiling water off the stove until it melts the lid and pan and causes large amounts of smoke and fumes.

I will be 37 this August 25^th. I am a echo of the shadow of the man I once was. I cannot run and play football with my boys, hike with my daughters, or even run up the stairs without taking a break at the top or even the middle to catch my breath. If my neighbors son Sam, gets the slightest amount of Gluten in his diet, it sends his physical, mental and emotional health into a tail spin. My daughters have side effects of irregular cycles of PMS, hives, migraines, face breaks out, loss of energy, GI problems, brain fog, ear infections, kidney infections, and the list goes on and on. Because Celiac Sprue is an “Auto-Immune” disease it affect the immune system in our bodies. When our immune systems are compromised we can be susceptible to a whole myriad of infections, diseases, and medical issues.

Why am I so emphatic about gluten free MEANING NO GLUTEN? Because I don’t want this to happen to you or any of your loved ones. Because I don’t want any of my celiac children to eat something that claims to be safe but is slowly poisoning them.

A few weeks ago I had an intern that went to their first day on the job at a grocery store making ice cream cones for the guests. Her first shift was 5 hours approximately and every time a guest would ask for a Kong Cone she would pull out of a box a cone and fill it with ice cream. Sarah has a very high sensitivity to gluten since she has full blown Celica’s Disease. When she got home she found she had hives from her wrist, down the left side of your chest, stomach and left leg almost to her knee. Just from some random dust that dropped out of the box when she pulled the cone’s out one by one. There are Great Harvest’s Stores out there seeing that the Gluten Free market is expanding aggressively and so some of the franchises are making a bread they call “Gluten Free!” Now, they make it in the same pans, the same kneading boards and in the same room and even at the same time as the other breads. There is no way that could be Gluten Free. However, because the FDA has chosen not to accept the rightful and legitimate meaning of Gluten Free to be 0ppm and only 0 ppm is truly Gluten Free, there are people out there that mistakenly trust the labels thinking that the FDA has got a tight grip on the reins and are being put in harm’s way because of it. Children and adults are eating breads that they are told by false advertising, “Gluten Free” when in reality it is not. We are all different. For me the Celiac disease ripped my body from the inside out, and gone a little longer just a few months I would not be here writing this email to you know.

History has a way of repeating itself if we don’t learn the lessons that life sends us.

I quote:

“Languishing in Congress for five years, the bill that would replace the 1906 was ultimately enhanced and passed in the wake of a therapeutic disaster in 1937. A Tennessee drug company marketed a form of the new sulfa wonder drug that would appeal to pediatric patients, Elixir Sulfanilamide. However, the solvent in this untested product was a highly toxic chemical analogue of antifreeze; over 100 people died, many of whom were children. The public outcry not only reshaped the drug provisions of the new law to prevent such an event from happening again, it propelled the bill itself through Congress. FDR signed the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act on 25 June 1938″ (U.S. Food and Drug Administration: FDA History – Part Two).

Don’t make history repeat its self. How many people have to die before someone up on Capitol Hill stops and says, “I think it’s time to overhaul the FDA, again!” I realize that most people feel that Celiac Sprue is just a fad or a neurotic issue. I even have family that try to tell me it’s all in my head. But I can promise you, my pain is real, my health is diminishing, and my mental faculties are slowly slipping away. This condition is as real as it gets. The pain that I am in is only second to my family that must stand by and watch my body deteriorate.

Allow us as Citizens to count on the FDA to do the right thing. If it says “GLUTEN FREE” then that means 0% Gluten. Simple, direct and to the point. Saying Low Gluten only serves to confuse the public and continue to perpetuate ignorance of this very real and deadly disease. New Grains Gluten Free Bakery is 100% Gluten Free! 0.0 ppm! That is the threshold or standard that I expect from my team for the safety of our clients that depend on us to be honest and provide a safe, nutritious, and wholesome alternative to its glutinous counterpart. I would hope and expect your organization to do the same thing. “GLUTEN FREE” MEANS 0ppm of Gluten in the food. I appreciate the time you spent reading this lengthy message and your thoughts on this very important matter would be very appreciated.

Timothy W. Lawson    

Gluten Free Pizza Party!

Before we started New Grains, I remember taking my younger children to a birthday party, and having to tell them that they couldn’t have any of the pizza or cake. As I’m sure any mother of a gluten free child can attest to, it is heartbreaking to watch your child look on as the other children eat freely. So when our Chloe turned nine, we made sure she could have all the cake and pizza she could want!

We had a Make-Your-Own-Pizza party! We set out already cooked gluten free personal pizza crusts along with sauce, cheese, and every topping any kid could ever wish for on a pizza.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tim cooked the pizzas at 450* from 3-5  minutes (Depending on how much they piled on).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then the kids chowed down! Even I was surprised at how much they liked the pizza- they couldn’t taste a difference, and Chloe was excited to share something she could actually eat with her friends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We finished up with some lovely gluten free cupcakes using our favorite cake recipe and simply replacing the flour with equal amounts of  all-purpose baking mix.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday, Chloe!

Xanthan Gum

One of the biggest problem in gluten free cooking is finding something to do Mr. Gluten’s job for him. Gluten is a protein in wheat, barley, and rye products that makes the dough stick together in that fluffy way bread does.

Oftentimes, gluten free baked goods are flat, moist, and fall apart.

Make sure you add xanthan gum (our favorite) or some other kind of binding agent to get your dough to stick together, thicken, and emulsify (get liquids that don’t normally combine to mix).

Xanthan Gum is made from fermented corn sugar, while Guar Gum (another option) comes from the legume plant. (Guar Gum is high in fiber, but is also said to lead to gastrointestinal problems in some people). Be careful when using both because while too little makes your bread crumbly, too much will get you a gummy, stringy, and slimy texture.

Usually, we find that 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of xanthan gum for every one cup of flour does the trick.