Many people eat out a lot on vacation and during the Holidays and my family is no exception.
Getting a decent restaurant meal that won’t give you a headache or make you feel sluggish the next day is challenging enough, but for those who are gluten-free, it can be nearly impossible.
While I personally do not eat gluten-free all the time, I make an effort to avoid conventionally prepared wheat in restaurants. Â I have observed over the years that while the organic wheat I grind fresh and carefully prepare traditionally at home by either sprouting, soaking or sour leavening causes me no trouble, restaurant pasta, bread, croutons, and other processed wheat items make me feel extremely tired and sometimes achy for a day or two.
So, when I discovered that a family gathering was scheduled to go to dinner at The Olive Garden a few weeks ago, you can imagine that I was not all that excited at the prospect.
The Olive Garden could aptly be called the “Pasta Capital of America”. Â The dishes are embarrassingly huge with pasta and bread flowing nonstop from the moment you sit down until you roll out the door a couple of hours later. Even if you order a nonpasta dish, you get an obligatory side of spaghetti that could feed two people by itself.
While the food at The Olive Garden tastes ok, how it makes you feel is quite another matter. My husband and I like to joke that those who eat at The Olive Garden likely collapse on the couch in front of the TV for 3 hours straight after getting home. Either that or an emergency stop at the 7-Eleven for a Big Gulp coffee would be necessary to stay awake!
I ended up arriving at the Olive Garden before the rest of my family, so I had the opportunity to chat with the hostess for a few minutes before getting seated. I was surprised to discover during our conversation that The Olive Garden has a gluten-free menu, complete with Penne Rigate and salad without croutons. Non-pasta dishes were served with gluten-free penne pasta.
After looking at the menu for a few minutes, I asked about the ingredients of the gluten-free pasta. Â I was thinking it was probably rice or quinoa pasta, which would have been fine with me.
I use arsenic-free rice or quinoa pasta (brand) myself at home occasionally, and a pasta meal once in a while is not going to be problematic within the context of a nutrient dense diet the majority of the time.
I really wanted to order pasta as ordering steak or fish at a pasta restaurant is not usually a good idea. Ordering the restaurant specialty is the way to go if you want to get a decent tasting meal.
Unfortunately, the news from the waitress was disappointing, to say the least. She told me the gluten-free pasta was made primarily from corn and not organic corn either.
While I don’t have an issue with corn, I definitely have an issue with genetically modified (GMO) corn which has been linked with all manner of serious health problems and was found to induce huge tumors in rats (this study was quietly retracted during Thanksgiving due to the messy public relations it was causing the biotech industry, not because of bad science).
Since basically all nonorganic corn nowadays is GMO, ordering a gluten-free dish at the Olive Garden was definitely a no go. However, the most disturbing thing about the GMO gluten-free menu was the children’s Penne Rigate with Marinara.
GMOs served to vulnerable, allergic children? Â Unconscionable.
I ended up ordering the parmesan encrusted tilapia that was absolutely terrible (it tasted like microwaved dish soap, no kidding). Â At least the asparagus on the side was good.
Eating Gluten-Free? Â Watch out for the GMOs!
My experience at The Olive Garden got me to thinking about the silent and very serious GMO problem that exists with supposedly healthier gluten free products.
Examination of typical foods stocking the gluten-free aisle at the supermarket and at the health food store in the days after my Olive Garden experience confirmed my suspicion that those who choose to eat gluten-free processed foods have unknowingly exchanged gluten for another ingredient that is much, much worse: GMOs.
Glutino, one of the biggest gluten-free brands, is prominent in both supermarket and health food stores. I checked the ingredients of 10 of their products and every single one contained GMO corn, GMO soy, GMO sugar and/or GMO canola.
I realize that Glutino has gone on record supporting the Non-GMO Verified Project Seal, but as of this writing, many of their products are still loaded wtih GMOs and dangerous to consume.
It is possible to make gluten-free items also free of GMOs?
Absolutely. Here are a few brands I checked that offer both gluten free and nonGMO options: Andean Dream, Enjoylife, and Pamela’s Simplebites.
If you have issues with gluten and have decided to go gluten-free even going so far as to make gluten-free flour at home, make sure you continue to read labels and ask about ingredients at restaurants! Â Even if a product proclaims itself “gluten-free”, it is not necessarily any better and might be far worse for your health.
The whole gluten free diet craze is really confusing to me. I have ready so many good reasons to stay away from wheat, breads, corn, etc. But I love bread!!! I don’t have any evidence that gluten is a problem for me, but if I stay away from it, I do tend to lose weight. So I’m wondering is there much of a difference in eating “sourdough” type bread?
“…have an issue with genetically modified (GMO) corn which has been linked with all manner of serious health problems and was found to induce huge tumors in rats…”
It’s worth noting that this study has been retracted due to a number of severe flaws – among them that the data used were from a small sample that was intended to test something else, that the rats in the study were predisposed to tumors already, and that the researchers could offer no mechanism by which it would even be physically possible for GMO food to cause tumors in the first place.
There are reasons to be suspicious of things like Monsanto’s sterile seeds, for example, but GMO is not evil just *because*. After all, any flower or plant that has been selectively bred or hybridized – hint: almost all of the ones we eat – are by definition genetically modified. The mechanism by which this takes place is not relevant. Hysterical GMO scare tactics and misinformation hurt real people who can – or must – benefit from GMO crops. Please don’t base your decisions – and worse, your writing – on hearsay and on pressure groups who have more to gain from anger and confrontation than from the truth.
PeriSoft: Since well over 95% of the GMO food crops available in the supermarket either make it easier for the “farmer” to add an over-abundance of pesticides to the crop, or enable pesticides to enter into the genome of the crop, and very very little of GMO practical application has gone towards providing real nutritional benefits (I have no issues with “Golden Rice” if it ever gets ready for serious consideration), in the meanwhile, I’d just rather say a strident NO to GMO as it is sold today. We humans have yet to be genetically engineered to withstand the pesticidal onslaught… And frankly I am not volunteering.
The point of the entire article was near the bottom of the page. Its called burying the lead and I learned not to do that the very first time I wrote a news article in college…
I totally agree, Jay. I found it to be a very frustrating article to read. The article is really about genetically modified processed foods, which has nothing to do with eating gluten free and what’s with the misleading title?!!!
Make your own GF crackers with tapioca flour, sweet potato, coconut oil eggs and salt. This makes a fabulous dough that you can knead and roll out properly.
I am only guessing on amounts, as I had to just play with ideas and clues when I started making these, but 1 egg, 1 1/4 cups of tapioca flour, half a sweet potato and a bit of salt is pretty close.
Roll as thin as possible and precut, Sprinkle with salt. Bake at 400 till crispy.
These end up tasting like wheat thins!
I know what you mean. It was gross. It is because it is precooked in a gf safe facility, packaged, and then shipped to the restaurant. It goes in the microwave. I ordered it once all excited because I love pasta (until I learned that it was the reason for my trouble) but literally could not eat it. I rarely send things back but it was so bad that I had too. Not a good choice at all. Some restaurants do get it right though. Usually local or smaller, in my opinion.
Tilapia is not my first choice in fish. Recently I found out that they are grown in sewage and have high levels of gluten and other bad things.. When I heard this from my local fishery I did some research and this is one site I found very helpful http://www.draxe.com/eating-tilapia-is-worse-than-eating-bacon/
Sheri, actually you can find responsibly-grown (farmed) tilapia, but probably not at your local Olive Garden. There is a place along the Connecticut shore that raises it, and some farm to table places serve it, and at some fishmongers you can buy it for home preparation. But no, I am certain not at Olive Garden.
I agree. Tilapia is probably a worse choice than the non-organic corn pasta.
Fish can’t have high levels of gluten even if they eat it themselves. If you don’t know about basic nutrition you likely don’t even know the reasons to avoid gluten in the first place. Do you check water labels for a gluten free seal of approval?
2 in our house can’t tolerate gluten. We never eat out…for budget and dietary reasons. But when we do eat pasta, we get the Trader Joe’s Organic Rice noodles. probably the best we can do for the price.
Kimberly Burrow
No reason to pick on Olive Garden as if they’re doing anything unusual. OF COURSE they’ll offer gluten-free as it’s becoming more in demand, but even organic GF products are often junk food. Chain Restaurants are mainstream and mainstream foods are uniformly made according to the lowest common denominator of what they can get away with, at the lowest price ( in most cases). No surprises here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending the irony of offering something that is supposed to be healthier but may be even worse than their standard menu, but you may as well pick on pizzerias like Papa John’s and Pizza Hut — to name a few– for carb overloads and lack of healthy food items on the menu. I detest that GMO ‘s exist, and the bottom line is that the old adage of ” buyer (ie., consumer) beware,” has never been more true–even in the organic s food market.