I know I'm not answering the question

[cjsmith]

People ask "What CAN you eat?" and I say "Well, no _________, no ___________ of any kind, no ________ including __________ ..."

That's not what they asked. It's the best and shortest answer I have at the moment, but it's in an unhelpful and inconvenient form. The harried admin trying to order lunch for thirty-five will understand only that I cannot have anything the restaurant offers. The guy doing the Costco snack-food run can read labels for an hour and still not find something I can eat. It's not even, when you get right down to it, a useful answer for myself. I know mainly what to avoid. It's a lot faster and easier to know what to go find.

[LJ-CUT TEXT="After five-plus weeks looking around, I can at least start this list now."]
If something's on here, presume that what's there is just that thing plain: ie chicken, NOT honey-roasted chicken or Kentucky fried chicken, JUST chicken.

I can eat these ingredients:
All vegetables except potatoes, turnips, beets, carrots, and parsnips.
Almost any meat or poultry. (Careful of the sugar-cured stuff, maple sausage, and the like.)
Eggs.
Any herb or spice I can currently think of.
Mustard (the condiment as well as the spice).
Oils such as olive oil, sesame oil, peanut oil.
Butter and margarine.
Soy products such as tofu.
Some fruits people don't tend to think of as fruits, such as tomato. (Need more examples here)
Any cheese. There are fussy details here, but frankly, this will do.
Unsweetened plain yogurt.
Any nuts.
Peanuts (technically a legume, but they're okay).
Unsweetened peanut butter or almond butter.

I dislike, but can eat:
Broccoli.
Mushrooms.
Artificial sweeteners.

I can eat in moderation:
Beans and legumes.
??Coconut??
??Milk??
Very dark chocolate with almost no sugar in it (careful of those "89% dark" but "16g sugar / serving" bars! Grab the "5g sugar in the whole bar" kind instead).
Lemon juice or lime juice used as flavoring or in cooking.

The basic things to avoid:
Sugars, fruits, starches, grains.

Nonobvious corollaries - also avoid:
Most commercially-made salad dressings, ketchup, bbq sauce, chili sauce, salsas, canned soups, marinades, dips, spaghetti sauces, Chicken Tonight sauces, and the like.
Most spicy foods made in Chinese restaurants in America.
Most fast-food burgers - full of sugar even if you ditch the bun.
Corn in any form including corn starch.
Alcohol including those stupid Atkins-bar "sugar alcohols".
Caffeine (may be unrelated to the yeast control diet, but it's listed in my treatment handout).
Fish or seafood of any kind (completely unrelated; these simply make me throw up).

Basically, if it isn't a fruit and isn't bread, and it's on the periphery of the grocery store instead of down one of the aisles, there's a good chance I can have it. If it is commercially prepared, there's a good chance I can't have it.[/LJ-CUT]

More helpful yet would be lists of made things somebody could buy rather than lists of raw ingredients. I'll get there.

Comments

[aelfie.livejournal.com]

Gluten exists in only 3 grains. Wheat, Rye, and Barley. Everything else is fair game. The problem with commercially made stuff is that A LOT of it contains some form of gluten or another.

Annoying.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, wheat is in an immense number of things. The only thing I can imagine that would be worse is something an acquaintance of mine from long ago has: a severe allergy to corn. He can't have anything with HFCS, anything with corn starch, etc. He can drink exactly one kind of soda: Jolt. He can eat exactly one brand of pasta. It's stunning how awful it is to be unable to eat corn in the USA. I didn't particularly like the dude, but I felt bad for him anyway.

[aelfie.livejournal.com]

He could drink coke from Mexico! =)

But seriously. Yea a corn allergy is MUCH worse than a gluten intolerance.

Cane Sugar Soda

[eichin.livejournal.com]

And most (all?) of "Jones Soda" (which I think has only been on the market for a year or two) which is made with Cane Sugar or Cane Juice, no HFCS (and they have some *bizarre* flavors, which is why I've tried some of them - though I find HFCS icky, it's taste/texture, not survival - though more and more allergies/rashes/minor conditions have been getting diagnosed as corn allergy/sensitivity...)

(Ah, the intertubes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_Soda) say they switched all flavors over to Cane Sugar last April.)

Re: Cane Sugar Soda

[aelfie.livejournal.com]

I also prefer Cane Sugar Sodas...HFCS is a very insidious substance and just not good for us at all.

I've taken to drinking Imported Organic Blood Orange soda from safeway...good stuff, and made with sugar!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah. In Europe he'd be fine, but here, no way.

I now get to live just like him, except that I can't have ANY sodas or ANY pastas... and of course I live like a gluten-intolerant person TOO! :-) But I won't die if I screw up. That's a big difference between me and him. And I have the hope that in a few years I can stop.