Going Gluten Free the Healthy Way

March 9, 2013

Darlene Kvist and Cassie Weness teach you how to eat gluten free with real foods for better health. Learn how to eat gluten free without buying all the processed gluten-free products and how to get the nutrients you need for good health and brain function.

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• What Does it Take to Be Gluten Free?
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Transcript

DAR: Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition. I’m Darlene Kvist, licensed nutritionist. And today's show is brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. I'm so happy to proudly announced that nutrition is finally in the spotlight when it comes to people's health. Amazing, I think. Did you know that last week there was a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that for the very first time through research, they found that diet had an effect as powerful as a prescription drug or medicine preventing in heart attacks, strokes, and death from cardiovascular disease. So, this study found that diet, what you're putting in your mouth, had amazing results on reducing heart attacks, strokes and death without any bad side effects. Now, this study involved about 7,500 people living in Spain. Half of the study participants followed a recommended diet, a low-fat diet. This is a doctor-recommended low-fat diet and half followed a Mediterranean diet. Those following a Mediterranean diet, what did they have in there, Cassie?

CASSIE: Good fats, plenty of good fats, olive oil, Avocados, nuts, even butter.

DAR: And they had a 30 percent fewer heart attacks. These people that ate the fats.  30 percent less strokes and death from heart disease than those on the old traditional low-fat diet. So, basically what we're trying to say, we want to shout it out from the rooftops, that good fat is good for your heart and blood vessels. You know, we've been teaching this message for a long time in our Weight & Wellness classes. Over 15 years, we've been teaching it. Now we have this big research studies back up what we've known for a long time ago. So, you might find us bragging throughout the whole show today about how effective nutrition is in preventing heart disease. And that voice that you hear over there is Cassie Weness, who is a registered and licensed Dietitian and she teaches many of our workplace wellness classes. So, welcome to the show, Cassie. I think we're going to do a little bragging about the importance of nutrition today and also talk about one of your very favorite topics, which is what?

CASSIE: Gluten free! Going gluten free the healthy way. We're going to talk about how to do it the healthy way and it is my absolute favorite nutrition topic to talk about and for two very special reasons, and those two very special reasons are listening back home right now. So, hello to my seven-year-old, Riley, and hello to Rissie, my five-year-old. They both have Celiac, so obviously severe form of gluten allergy. They both have dairy allergies. I have a gluten allergy and a dairy allergy as well. So, we're sort of the trifecta there and we make a good team. So, when you're out there teaching those nutrition classes, those workplace wellness classes and you’re teaching such classes as Foods for Great Energy or Five Steps to Boost Metabolism, are people kind of surprised when you tell them that good fats help them lose weight or that cooking eggs in butter lowers cholesterol?

CASSIE: Well, you know, I always start out by teaching a class telling how I found out about Nutritional Weight & Wellness years ago, which was through this radio show. I still remember the first time clicking through the FM radio stations, came across FM station 107.1 and I hear a lady's voice on there and she says she's a nutritionist. So, of course I stopped to listen and this lady on the radio said, you have to be eating real butter and heavy whipping cream if you want to come off of your cholesterol-lowering medication and control your diabetes naturally. And I started laughing out loud in the car and I looked at my husband. He was in the car with me. I said, “Did you hear what that crazy lady just said?” So, I always start out with that story. That crazy lady was you, Dar. So, then I don't get the looks like I'm crazy, but to your question, absolutely. People, even if they've been followers of ours or listening to the radio show or they've been to several classes before and they believe in us, as you talk to them further, almost always these people still have some low-fat dressing or they still have the light sour cream in their refrigerator. You know, even though we've been teaching the correct message for the past 15 years, the message on TV, the message coming from the doctors is still that low fat message and so people are still hearing the TV nutrition message and they're buying the low fat foods really thinking that they're doing right by their health. But again, this research you're talking about, it found that people had 30 percent fewer heart attacks and strokes with a diet high in good fats. So, quit thinking low fat, start eating the good fats. Lots of olive oil, olives, nuts and seeds, even organic butter. This is a type of diet that's easy to follow, easy to live with, and really tastes great too.

DAR: And I think that’s part of what the researchers found is that it's easy to follow. People did not feel like they were on a diet. It was just a way of life.

CASSIE: Right? And that those healthy fats give you a feeling of satiety and fullness. So, of course it's going to be easier to follow versus those low-fat diets that leave you having cravings and you just can't wait til you're done with the diet so you can give in to the cravings.

DAR: Let’s face it. Vegetables taste so much better when they're sautéed in a little bit of butter. And you know, it was interesting. A couple of weeks ago, the cardiologists that we had on the show, Dr. Stephen Sinatra, said it isn't the good fats that cause cardiovascular disease. It’s the sugar. We always get back to sugar and processed carbs that people are eating that cause heart disease. And this is what happens. Sugar inflames the blood vessels, causing damage. And he said it over and over many times, it's not the fats, it is the sugar.

CASSIE: And you've said it many times and we all at Nutritional Weight & Wellness are trying to get that message out. But it's hard to break that low-fat mentality because it's been around for so many years. But you know, think about it. Whenever a food company creates a low-fat product, you take out the fat and you really have a loss of flavor. So, to make up for that loss of flavor, the food company adds more sugar and they usually add some more chemicals to give some type of a good mouth feel and a good flavor, but then they've created a very inflammatory product and we know that at the core of heart disease is inflammation.

DAR: Inflammation, inflammation, inflammation, and it goes back to that whole sugar. I just had something else that I wanted to follow up on the diabetes show that we had last week. I found another study published in the Public Library of Science Journal that clearly found that obesity, now this is, I think this is amazing. Obesity does not cause diabetes, but it is sugar. And we've heard that message over and over and over and over. Well, if you lose weight, you'll get rid of your diabetes, but not necessarily. You lose weight because you cut down on the sugar you're eating and then maybe you hope. 

CASSIE: Yeah, because if you lose weight and you don't cut out the sugar, I think that diabetes could still stick around, and in fact, this study we’re talking about found that the more sugar that's available, the more occurrences of diabetes and the longer sugar is available, the prevalence of diabetes increases. Now, the upside of all this is that when we take away the sugar, the diabetes rate decreases. And this talk about diabetes and weight reminds me of a class I taught last year and I remember this lady coming up to talk to me after the class and we'd been talking about blood sugars in the class, so of course she came up to share afterwards on the topic and looking at her, she was the perfect size. She was probably early sixties and if I had had a BMI chart there, she would've been ideal weight and she shared with me that she had just been diagnosed with diabetes and she was just taken aback. How could this be because she'd never been overweight at any point in her life. But as we talked further, she had always had a real sweet tooth. It sure made sense to me.

DAR: So, Cassie, I think we have a caller and I don't know if we have time before our break.

CASSIE: Let’s take one quick caller here. We have Joann. Hi, Joann. Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition.

CALLER:  Good morning. Thank you. Yesterday Dr. Oz had a world-renowned Alzheimer's specialist on with a new way to eat so that you don't get Alzheimer's and he advocated absolutely no meats because of all the excess iron and metals that will go to your brain causing Alzheimer's, blah, blah, blah. Which leads me to question, how do you decide what information is valuable? How do you filter through all the myriad, the madness of all the nutritional advice and information that is being bombarded by us every day? The conflicting information from so-called experts. If it's OK, do you mind if I just hang up and listen?

CASSIE: Yeah, and I think we will answer it when we come back from break. That's a great question that we should speak to. So, stay with us and thanks for the question.

You're listening to Dishing Up Nutrition. Before we go to break, if you are confused about what it means to be gluten free or maybe you're just confused about how you even start eating gluten free, I would love for you to check out our online class. It's called Going Gluten Free the Healthy Way. It's a one and a half hour class that will teach you all about the foods you need to avoid and the foods you need to include in your diet to go gluten free the healthy way. I'm one of the teachers on this online class, so that's part of why I'm so excited to talk about it. Also teaching with me is my friend and colleague, Mary Hauge, and I know why you picked us, Dar. We are teaching that online class for good reason. We both live a gluten-free diet for medical reasons. Not only that, we both have kids that need to be gluten free, so we speak to that piece throughout this class as well. So, if you sign up for this online class, Mary Hauge and I will teach you how to eat real food to provide your body the nutrients you need to heal from the inside out. If you're interested, you just click on the online class button, settle back, and change your nutrition to change your life. And when we get back, we're going to address that last question about the Alzheimer's and the conflicting information. We'll be right back.

BREAK

DAR:  Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition.

CASSIE:   We have to get back to our question. It was such a great question that we could probably take a full hour to answer, but we won't. So, before we went to break, a lady called in and talked about some guy that was recently on Dr. Oz saying that part of why we have so much Alzheimer's is too much meat consumption, excess iron. He must have had something he was selling.

DAR: So, it's a couple of things when we look at Alzheimer's, we would look at some of the more obvious things. Obvious things would be sugar because it's inflammatory.

CASSIE: Yes. Well, and I will even say Dr. Oz has a book out there and one of his books where he talks in detail about how excess sugar is a key component to the rise in Alzheimer's and he goes into the whole science of it, which I can't reiterate right now. So there's that.

DAR: The other thing that we always would look at is avoiding trans fats because we know that that makes kind of hard crusty cell walls and then messages are not getting in and so that does affect memory. So trans fats, sugar, the obvious, but then I think her question was deeper than that. How do we know what research studies to look at and what not and how do we have the right knowledge? Well, we kind of look at it from a common sense approach. Kara, one of our nutritionists, forward me a study about doctor this saying Broccoli is not good for us now. So, we go back and say, does this make sense? This is real food and people have been eating meat and good fats and vegetables forever.

CASSIE:   Right, it's food that was put on earth for us to eat.

DAR: And we didn't have a high rate of Alzheimer's disease at that time.

CASSIE: But what has changed? Our sugar consumption.

DAR:  Our processed foods and out trans fats and our sugar. So, when we're looking at research, we try to see if it makes sense and then we look at who's doing it. And again, we go back to “Does that make sense?” That's my best answer.

CASSIE: A simple answer for Joann, that caller, just listen to Dishing Up Nutrition and we will decode it for you. I took more than one college class on how to decipher research studies and find out if they had any valid points. And I did well in college, but I disliked those classes so much because they were hard. It is hard to break apart a research study and figure out if it holds up.

DAR:   I mean, we kind of do a lot of things with Dr. Walter Willett because he's head of the Harvard Public Health Medical School and he does all the research and he has all the nurse’s studies and he has like 50,000 people in his studies. So, I mean that's what we look at more than anything.

CASSIE:  Because, like you said, I mean part of it is looking at who funded it and sometimes even when it seems to be biased that it could be a good study. So, I don't want to say always if it was funded by a food company or somebody with a vested interest that it's bad, but that's one thing to look at. And Walter Willett doesn't have a vested interest in things and he does put out some good research.

We have a caller on line one. Carol, welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition. You had a question for us?

CALLER:  I guess I do. I have a borderline high sugar lab work, my glucose, and I'm wondering how other alternative sweeteners figure in with keeping my sugar high. Like just the cane sugar does probably, whether it's organic or sucanat or any of that. For instance, honey, agave, Stevia, but will they all help to keep my glucose level high in subsequent testing?

DAR:   Definitely, except Stevia. So, you could substitute Stevia in for some of those other sugars, but honey certainly is.

CASSIE:  It raises your blood sugar about the same. Agave certainly raises your blood sugar about the same. Sometimes you might hear them talked about in a little better light because they're a little more natural than bleached white sugar, but they still do the same thing with blood sugar.

CALLER: OK. And then again, I understand that the sugar glucose level also affects arthritis. So, is it in the same manner? The stevia would be the best with the others all about the same?

DAR:  Absolutely, yes.

CALLER: OK, well thank you.

CASSIE: Good question. You've made a great connection for some other listeners, too.

DAR:   So, we talked the first 15 minutes of the show all about different studies. So, I really want to share a client story. We always say change your nutrition to change your life. Well, this life-changing story you're going to love. On January 16th, 2013, Theresa, a 20-year-old college student came in as a client to see me. She was experiencing stomach pains, IBS, sleep problems, anxiety, daily headaches. She was waking up feeling sick to her stomach every morning. She lacked focus, had a difficult time following a lecture, and was moody. In addition, she had ongoing sinus problems. She was really ready to change her nutrition. I know after working with hundreds of clients with IBS, anxiety, and sleep problems, the culprit is often a gluten sensitivity.

CASSIE:  And some people are saying, “crazy lady!” I'm sure a lot of our listeners get that there is a connection often with gluten sensitivity and diarrhea or constipation. I think more and more people are getting the connection with gluten sensitivity and acid reflux, but I bet a lot of listeners right now are saying, how in the heck is a gluten sensitivity connected to insomnia? Or how is it connected to anxiety? How does gluten affect brain chemistry?

DAR:  I think that's a great question. And everything falls apart when I'm trying to put things together. My son, Kory, forwarded me an article, which was actually a case study that appeared in the Journal of Neurology. And this was a case study of a five year old boy who was diagnosed with severe autism. After initial investigation, they found an underlying genetic gluten sensitivity problem, and guess what?

CASSIE: After the removal of that gluten from his diet and after adding a few key supplements to correct his malabsorption problems, his symptoms of autism slowly started decreasing. All of his gastrointestinal symptoms went away and his central nervous system function improved and he had less and less symptoms of autism over time. So, absolutely there is a gluten connection to your nervous system and the symptoms of anxiety. For Theresa, absolutely a connection to that lack of focus and insomnia. So again, getting back to that college student’s story, Dar.

DAR:  OK, so this past Monday, Theresa and her mom came back for a follow-up appointment. These are Teresa's words: “I feel so much better. My anxiety is gone. I feel happy. I enjoy my classes. I can focus on what the teacher is saying. I have energy after class and when I'm taking a test, now I don't have that gloom and doom feeling and I don't feel like I'm gonna die.” These are her words. “And did I tell you my sinuses are all cleared up? I'm sleeping deeper and longer, no more IBS and I haven't missed any school because of illness. I feel great!” And this is another thing she said, “Being gluten and dairy free is not a problem because I feel so good. I never want to go back.”

CASSIE: And you are her hero I bet because who knew? There's not a lot of other people out there that would have made that connection and we hear that a lot, don't we? I don't ever want to go back. I can do this because I feel so great.

And look at that, we're already halfway through the show. We're going to take another break. You're listening to Dishing Up Nutrition. Before we go to commercial, I want to leave you with two pearls of information. If you're gluten sensitive or if you have celiac disease, it is important to take some key supplements to heal the lining of the small intestinal tract.           At Nutritional Weight & Wellness, we often recommend taking the probiotic called bifido bacteria. I take that one myself. For most adults, if you take it two or three times a day, that works well. One before each meal is a real standard recommendation that we will give. One capsule before each meal. Another very, very important nutrient that supports intestinal healing is l glutamine. We often recommend taking one to two capsules of l glutamine before each meal. At least for three to six months after you've been diagnosed with that gluten sensitivity or celiac disease. These are supplements that will help with the absorption of nutrients and again, help to heal you from the inside out.

BREAK

DAR:  Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. Any of you who are gluten sensitive, you may have noticed that you have more carb cravings and a slower metabolism for many. Clients in our Nutrition 4 Weight Loss class tell us they have fewer cravings and lose weight better when they go gluten free. This could be the answer to getting your metabolism back on track.

CASSIE:  Oh, my goodness, those callers are lining up. So, let's start with line one. Good morning, Amy. Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition. You had a gluten related question?

CALLER: Yes, I do. So, I have always been a pretty healthy eater and I exercise, but I've always really struggled with my weight. Taking off weight, I’ve done every diet. And the past year I've really focused on cutting out gluten and really natural eating, things like that. So, then I noticed I felt better and heartburn and things like that were better and I did lose some weight. And I'm continuing to. It’s been about a year. When I went to the doctor and I did a lot of blood work and stuff as I've been kind of struggling with figuring out what this is, they told me I did not have any gluten intolerance. So, the question is do I just continue what I'm doing because I feel good or do I do more testing?

DAR:  I think your first was the right answer. You're feeling good. Tests are not very accurate these days.

CASSIE: And did they even run a test on you?

CALLER:  Yeah, they did a blood test. My gluten intolerance numbers were normal.

CASSIE: I think the last statistic I read on that said something like the blood tests for gluten testing are inaccurate 70 to 90 percent of the time. You have to be really sick before it shows up in your blood. It's going to show up in your intestines. If you get leaky gut and things start getting out, it's going to show up in your blood. So yeah, back to Dar’s point. That's the best test.

DAR:  I mean you're not missing anything by not eating it.

CALLER: Yeah, no, it definitely is helping and then, so I could have an intolerance, perhaps, not a severe allergy to it? I don't believe I have a severe allergy or anything like that, but I do think it's why a can't perhaps lose weight and feel the best.

DAR: I think you're probably true because what it does is it inflames your fat cells and then when you have inflamed fat cells it's harder to lose the weight.

CALLER: So, for continuing weight loss, my weight loss is so slow and such a battle. So, do I just kind of keep doing what I'm doing or do I try and go one hundred percent gluten-free, be really, really crazy good about it?

DAR:  If you really want to lose weight faster I would be very strict.

CASSIE:  I would recommend the same thing and just lots of vegetables instead of that slice of bread. Sweet potato or Broccoli, you're going to get more bang for your buck anyway.

CALLER: Yeah. I never eat bread, like real, hard, true gluten carbs. But like I think they sneak in there in places still because I wasn’t so certain because of that blood test. So now I'm thinking listening to you guys, I thought I shouldn't listen to that blood test so much. That’s so interesting. So, 70-90 percent chance that was wrong anyways.

CASSIE: Exactly. And the research shows that if you have a spec of gluten, the size of your pinky fingernail, it can leave inflammation for four to six months afterwards. So, if you're having one little bite of something one week and then not doing it again for another four weeks, you still have that lingering inflammation on top of inflammation. So, 100 percent gluten free.

DAR: Well, thanks for the call this morning.

CALLER:   I’ll try to eat 100 percent gluten free instead of ninety percent and then hopefully I’ll see a difference.

DAR:   Yup, that's right. Yep. I would think so.

CASSIE: Go big or go home, isn't that what they say?

DAR: That's what we see, especially in our Nutrition 4 Weight Loss classes. If people go gluten free, they do much better.

CASSIE: Thank you for the call. Should we take another car? We have Sophia. Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition. You had a question for us?

CALLER: I have a question and a comment. My first question is about stevia. I have been completely sugar-free for about four months and I have used stevia and liked it. The one thing I've found though is that you have to really be careful of the additives.

DAR: Yes, you do. Very good point.

CALLER: Any brand of Stevia you find in the big box stores are going to have some either sugar, what amounts to sugar in them, or else there's another additive called erythritol. Is that correct?

CASSIE:  That's in the more processed stevia called Truvia.

CALLER:  And that gave me a stomach ache.

DAR:Yes, that’s a sugar alcohol. And it does give people intestinal problems. Very nice comment you made.

CALLER: And then the other thing I wanted to know about is I came in and saw Kate, actually, and had a consultation. And now have been gluten free and dairy free for about three weeks. And I feel a real improvement and I like it. One of the questions is my doctor told me that I should be taking calcium supplements and now I'm off milk and I was told don't take the calcium, but I'm just kind of wondering about that. Am I going to get the calcium I need?

DAR:  Well, if you're eating vegetables and when you take out gluten you tend to start eating more vegetables and so that's the calcium that gets absorbed. What I would say is do this for a while and then when you're back in and visiting with Kate, that would be a great question to ask her because I think if you've got osteopenia or osteoporosis, you might need calcium, but if you don't, you're probably getting more calcium absorbing than you were when you were doing gluten and dairy.

CASSIE: Right, because dairy probably wasn't sitting well with your body. You were probably reacting more negatively to it.

CALLER: How do I know dairy wasn't sitting well with my body?

CASSIE:  You feel great off of it.

CALLER: Well, yeah, but it could be the gluten, too.

DAR: Well, I would do both for a while and then I would add back in a little dairy and see how you feel.

CALLER: Right. And I'll talk more about that with Kate.

DAR:  Yeah. Well, thank you very much. I appreciated her comments about stevia.

CASSIE: Good point. They've taken a very natural product and some of the bigger food companies have made it their own and so it's not always really pure. So, you do want to get it as pure as you can and I don't like the one with the erythritol, personally. We’ve got to take a break. We'll be right back.

BREAK

DAR:  Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. I don’t know if you know this, Cassie, but there is really a new trend that's kind of a serious trend.         Women are not living as long as they have in the past and men are actually catching up with us in longevity. Researchers are really kind of puzzled about what is the cause of this. And my thought is, because they have no thoughts on what was causing this, so could it be the low-fat, fat-free diet mentality that is actually shortening the life of women because the women have been the ones that have been doing the low-fat, no fat stuff for a long time. It's just something to ponder at least. Or is it all the sugar that women are eating that's causing this? It's something's causing it. So, before we take any more callers, I want to get back to Theresa because I think she is so interesting. I also had Theresa stop eating eggs because she told me eggs had made her sick ever since she was a little girl, so why make her eat something that's going to make her sick?

CASSIE:  Right. And I when I heard a top allergist speak out of Mount Sinai here not too long ago, she said eggs or the number two top food allergy.

DAR:  I'm finding more and more clients that have a sensitivity to egg. It's really interesting what's happening.

CASSIE: Well, it makes me think, is it what we've been feeding the chickens for the past couple of decades. The wrong things.

DAR: But back to Theresa. And Theresa’s a college student. You think about that. Remember your college years? And she's been living in a dorm. I mean she lives in a dorm. So, what did she do? She made an appointment with the college chef and they worked out a special menu for her. So, what is she eating? This is an important part. She's not eating gluten-free products. She's eating real food. That's why we call our plan going gluten free, the healthy way.

CASSIE: Right. Now, looking at the meal plan that you helped Theresa put together and then of course she had to work with the chef. You start her day with some nitrate-free sausage, maybe three or four ounces and then you told her go ahead and have half of a sweet potato or even if you can have some organic hash browns, something that's a little bit of a filler there that's healthy and then of course butter on top of those potatoes. But to me, I mean there's many key components here, but to me one of the big key components for this college student is the animal protein piece. She needs enough animal protein to get her brain functioning. Now, it would've been easy to just ask the food service to order in some gluten-free muffins. They’re readily available. But all that sugar would have heightened her anxiety and it would not have given her the nutrients that she needs to have good brain function. As a mom of two kids with gluten sensitivities and being gluten sensitive myself, it is so clear to me that because of our intestinal inflammation caused by eating gluten all those years in the past, we lack good absorption of nutrients, many nutrients at least. So, whether we're talking about Theresa or whether we're talking about me or whether we're talking about my kids, a gluten free muffin does not contain the nutrients that our bodies and our brains need for positive functioning. Now, one of my favorite meals that I really feel my best on is a nice steak, cooked medium rare, my favorite, and then some vegetables on the side and of course some butter or maybe some olive oil on those vegetables for my healthy fat. That's really when I function and feel my best.

DAR: Yes, I can understand that. Some people believe being gluten-free means shopping for and eating gluten-free products. In fact, we just received our latest living well magazine from the Celiac Association. And as I was flipping through it and checking out the recipes, here are a few of the recipes: Super Moist Soda Bread, Gluten-Free, Casein-Free Pumpkin Pie, the Best Banana Bread, the Molten Spice Chocolate Cake. Sugar, sugar, sugar, and more sugar. So, we believe these foods do not support the brain and the body. You need real food void of sugar. And because we all know that sugar is inflammatory.

CASSIE:  Sugar is inflammatory. And I actually get that magazine at my house because I love, love the articles in it. They're very science-based. Based on good research. There was one recently on the connection with autism. There was one recently on the high rate of thyroid disease in people with Celiac. So, there's some really great articles in there if you can get past the pictures of all the baked goods.

DAR: You can see how confused people are, right? They look at that magazine and they automatically think that they can be eating these junk foods. They're processed junk food, really.

CASSIE: Right. You can eat the junkie, the gluten-free way or you can eat healthy the gluten-free way. Gluten-free in and of itself does not mean you're on the right track. You have to get back to real food. And Theresa's a good little case study here. She feels great on gluten-free, dairy free, egg free, but then eating real food is the other part of that. Now, the majority of people with a gluten sensitivity or celiac disease have some great improvement within just the first few weeks of getting on a gluten-free diet. We've heard that from a couple of callers today, but up to 30 percent of gluten sensitive people continue to have symptoms long after they've given up the gluten. Why is that?

DAR: Well, we believe that these people who have substituted gluten free processed carbs for their old favorites. Now they're eating gluten-free bread rather than wheat bread or they snack on gluten-free Oreos rather than standard Oreos or they chow down on big plates of gluten-free pasta and that doesn't work for people.

CASSIE: No. They have just basically switched to gluten-free junk food instead of gluten-containing junk food. What you're mentioning are all processed carbs, all full of sugar. A lot of big food companies, and there's more than one out there right now, have rushed to line the grocery shelves with these somewhat spendy gluten free junk food items. Just look in the cereal aisle. You can find a couple of different big manufacturers going gluten free in the cereal aisle, but are consumers healthier when they choose these items or are they stuck in that malabsorption right from high-carb, high-sugar eating? If you want real results, if you really want to feel good, I should say, if you really want to feel great because we can all feel great, you need to switch off those boxed, packaged, gluten-free products. They're not real. You need to be eating food that was put on this earth for our bodies to eat. That's what we know what to do with. Like real meat, real vegetables, real fats.

DAR: And it's so interesting. I wanted to give this story of Theresa today because here she is, a college student. She has figured out how to do this as a college student. The college is very supportive of her eating plan and they're helping her do it and it's amazing what occurred in about six weeks with her health. And we see this over and over, don't we?

CASSIE: We do, and for Theresa, she was ready to jump in and try it because I think she was on her final leg. She wanted to find something that worked. But a lot of times people get really scared or fearful when you mention to them that you need to go gluten free or you need to go gluten and dairy free. But just like Teresa, once you do it and you feel great, it is so worth it. And people are generally easy to work with, just like this college chef.

DAR: I mean, they really want to help people feel better and be successful wherever they are. I think restaurants are starting to do that.

CASSIE: You just have to ask.

DAR: Well Cassie, thank you for being on today.

CASSIE: Yes, I hope we get some people clicking on that online class. It's a great, fun, informative class. Thank you for listening today.