BoomerGirl Diary

When JoAnn Farb gave birth to her second child, her joy was soon coupled with concern over a feeling that something just wasn’t right.

Her daughter, Samantha, now 10, was eating sparingly despite acting hungry, and she always seemed like something was upsetting her.

When Samantha began to talk, she immediately began to complain of stomach aches soon after eating.

Farb brought Samantha to one doctor after another trying to figure out the problem.

“And the doctor kept saying, ‘Oh, kids have tummy aches. It’s nothing. She’s healthy,’” says Farb, a Lawrence resident and author. “She kept saying, ‘My tummy hurts!’”

Negative on stomach ulcers, still positive for stomach aches.

When Samantha was 8, a friend told Farb she could test for sensitivity to gluten through a non-invasive lab test. The test came back positive — Samantha was producing high levels of antibodies that mark sensitivity to gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, rye and oats, Farb says.

Samantha was having an auto-immune reaction to gluten that had been causing her stomach aches. The family finally had an answer.

They also had another surprise — the rest of the family, JoAnn, husband Joe and daughter Sarina, 14, also tested positive for gluten sensitivity.

While an estimated 1.5 million to 3 million Americans have celiac disease, a condition that leaves them unable to digest gluten, Farb believes as many as 1 in 3 of us have some level of gluten sensitivity.

Going gluten free

Once she knew the cause of her daughter’s ills, Farb hit the books and the Internet researching ways to overhaul her family’s diet. The family already followed a vegan diet — meaning they eat no meat or animal by-products — and many of the recipes and tips Farb found weren’t appropriate.

“We were already used to eating a whole foods, plant-based diet. When we decided to go gluten free and I was trying (to figure), ‘Now, how do I do all the grains and the breads and the baked goods?’ and I started looking at cookbooks and the mixes in the store and everything everywhere, pretty much, as soon as they took the gluten out, they added all kinds of processed starches, extra sugar, extra fat, sometimes even trans-fats were being put in and often dairy and eggs,” Farb says. “And so I couldn’t find any recipes that really worked for our family.”

She began playing with staples of a gluten-free kitchen on her own, working with things like nutritional yeast flakes, xanthan gum and flax seed to create gluten-free recipes. Eventually, she created enough dishes, from appetizers to desserts, to write and self-publish a cookbook, “Get off Gluten!” which is being sold locally as well as online at Amazon.com and at Farb’s Web site, www.getoffgluten.com.

Danna Korn, the author of several gluten-free cookbooks, also turned to creating her own recipes when her son was diagnosed with gluten intolerance 17 years ago.

“I walked into a store and said, ‘Hi, where’s your gluten-free department?”’ Korn says. “There was one type of bread that was less tasteful than sawdust glued together. I cried as my son ate it.”

Today, choices abound. Once a niche of the natural foods market, gluten-free products now can be found in mainstream grocers. Even King Arthur Flour Co. is launching a line of gluten-free mixes.

But for Farb, these processed products are just a bandage for bad eating habits.

“It seemed to me, we made this change to improve our health, so why would I want to give up using whole foods for processed, refined ingredients and that’s why I wrote my book. Because I started having to create recipes to work for us and then I thought, well, other people might be interested in healthy gluten-free eating,” Farb says. “Too many people out there think that just getting the gluten out of their diet is going to save their health. And if you look at the products that are catering to this community, I think they’re going to have a lot of health problems down the road from eating that way.”

Link to other problems

In Farb’s research, she has found that prolonged exposure to gluten could be at the root of many diseases for gluten-sensitive people.

“They’re connecting gluten now with neurological issues, with behavioral issues, learning disabilities, autism, schizophrenia, and not that it’s implicated for every person who suffers from these, but they’re finding large numbers of people who suffer from these things are doing better when they get them off the gluten,” Farb says. “And many of these people test negative on traditional celiac screenings.”

For these reasons, as well as the family’s day-to-day wellness, Farb is glad Samantha’s tummy went off in alarm.

“She may be just the canary in the coal mine,” Farb says of Samantha. “We suffered so long not knowing that something really simple could fix our problem, for my daughter and for the rest of us, we didn’t have obvious symptoms.”

Gluten-Free Lemon Olive Oil Cookies

Start to finish: 3 hours 15 minutes (40 minutes active)

Makes 10 large or 15 small cookies

1 cup sweet rice flour

1 cup tapioca flour

1/2 cup almond flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup high-quality lemon olive oil

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1/4 cup sour cream

3 tablespoons lemon juice

Zest of 1 lemon

In a large bowl, combine the sweet rice flour, tapioca flour, almond flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In a second large bowl, use an electric mixer to cream the olive oil and 1/2 cup of sugar until well combined. Add the egg and blend. Slide in the sour cream and lemon juice. Mix until a cohesive mixture has formed.

Slowly fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, a quarter cup at a time. Incorporating the dry goods slowly improves the texture of gluten-free baked goods.

Add lemon zest at the last moment. The dough will be sticky.

Cover the bowl and refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours, or overnight.

When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 F. Place the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar in a bowl. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Form the dough into small balls. Roll each ball in the bowl of sugar and place the dough balls on the prepared baking sheet. Bake about 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes on the baking sheet.

The cookies will be soft and cakey, not crisp. Carefully transfer the cookies to a cooling rack to rest for another five minutes, during which time they will harden.

(Recipe from Shauna James Ahern in “Gluten-Free Girl,” Wiley, 2007)

Chocolate Chip Flax Cookies

3 cups ground flax seeds

3 cups sorghum flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 tablespoon xanthan gum

1 3/4 cups maple syrup

3/4 cup canola oil

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 10-ounce bag of gluten-free/dairy free chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Place the flax, baking powder, baking soda, salt and xanthan gum in a large bowl and blend with a wire whisk. Place the syrup, oil and vanilla in the blender and blend well. Add the wet to the dry and mix in the chips. Place teaspoonfuls of dough about 1 inch apart on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. Bake for about 12 to 15 minutes.

— From “Get off Gluten” by JoAnn Farb