Discover essential tips for a gluten-free holiday season with Dr. Aimee Duffy on FOX – Access Carolina. Enjoy festive meals worry-free!
Expert Tips for Enjoying Festive Gatherings Without Gluten
The holidays can be challenging for individuals with dietary restrictions, particularly those following a gluten-free diet. Expert advice can make a significant difference in navigating festive meals without compromising health. One effective strategy is to explore delicious alternatives and key planning tactics that allow for enjoyment during the season while adhering to dietary needs. This approach ensures that the joy of holiday meals remains intact, even when avoiding gluten.
A great example of a gluten-free treat is Almond Flour Sugar Cookies. This recipe includes simple ingredients: almond flour, baking soda, salt, coconut oil or unsalted butter, honey or maple syrup, and vanilla extract. The preparation is straightforward—mix the dry ingredients, whisk together the wet ingredients, combine them, roll the dough into balls, flatten them, and bake until golden. This delightful cookie recipe allows everyone to indulge in holiday festivities without the worry of gluten.
Embrace the Joy of the Season: Dr. Aimee Duffy’s Expert Tips for a Delightfully Gluten-Free Celebration!
Welcome back to access Carolina whether you have medical reasons for going gluten-free or you just like the idea of doing your digestive health a favor there are ways to enjoy the holidays without sacrificing flavor Dr Amy Duffy is here with some ideas happy almost Thanksgiving it’s tomorrow so excited yeah we’re we’re all in the spirit we’re.
All getting excited um but we’re we’re surrounded by food and you say there are reasons that that everybody could look at going gluten-free what are some of the benefits so one of the most important are obvious is like gut health right so if you feel like I have vowel irregularities you have some indigestion bloating those could be signs that you.
May want to avoid some gluten another one is just kind of fatigue and brain fog I mean if you have a reaction to something and your body has to work hard to deal with it it just wears you out um so somebody who’s just exhausted all the time brain fog that yeah you might want to think about is your diet doing it and and going gluten-free is a is a number.
One thing that you can start the other thing is that things that have gluten in it made with flour are full of carbs the pasta the the cookies the bread the cakes you know so eating a lot of carbs is going to wear you out after after a while too and make some my brain’s not working it too in the afternoon kind of experience then you can get deeper into.
Autoimmune stuff like inflammation skin issues arthritis joint pain all those can be signs that you might be reacting to gluten as well well and gluten-free used to be kind of a tough thing for somebody to be but now we’ve come a long way and we’ve learned a lot of things so much easier you can yeah yeah you can find a lot of stuff in the store that’s.
Labeled gluten-free I think the easiest thing is to think about things that are naturally gluten-free anyway so vegetables fruits your proteins your Meats your nuts things like that they don’t have any gluten in them so you don’t really have to worry about that plus they’re going to be healthier anyway less processed sticking with the.
Whole Foods anything less processed you’re going to feel better about all those things we talk about there’re also some gluten-free swaps that can help us to replace some of the traditional Staples with maybe gluten-free Alternatives or some of those so definitely flowers when you’re baking you can use almond flour coconut flour.
To tapioca flour those are all fairly easy to get these days and then pasta out there as well they do I mean they’re a little bit thicker but you know there’s ways to kind of play around with it and and swap some things out we were talking about mac and cheese making a Cheesy cauliflower instead so you know you’re still getting the the cheesy.
Experience of something but it doesn’t have to be full of gluten and carbs yep and lastly uh you say be label Savvy as well what are we looking for on the food labels there can be some things that are tricky in there that have gluten in them that you may not notice so anything that says um so like soy can have gluten in it.
It’s kind of confusing but Rye things like that so you want to if you’re really trying hard to be glutenfree you want to look at something and make sure the label says gluten-free okay CU it may not be obvious overall one of the big messages here is that gluten-free doesn’t have to mean that you’re sacrificing flavor and these are an.
Example flour sugar cookies really Testament to this they they smell wonderful how did you make them taste yeah you can eat so we start with some almond flour and then I added salt and baking soda in there um then you’re going to throw in some softened or preferably melted it just didn’t stay melted coconut oil so you’re going to.
Get some good fats in there this is maple syrup with some vanilla I like maple syrup versus Honey CU honey tends to burn a little bit more so all of this not only are we being gluten-free but it’s a lot less carbs as well so once you mix this all up it’s going to end up being you know sort of like hard cookie and you’re just going to turn it into a.
Little balll then flatten it on your cookie pan and that for about minutes it comes out like that I threw some frosting on with sprinkles to be fun but I mean that’s a Great Cookie I was going to say Great Cookie Nobody Knows the difference so you know just small changes can lead to Big improvements in health so uh you’re big on finding those.
Healthy alternatives Dr Amy Duffy we appreciate it thank you and Happy Thanksgiving you too excellent people can find Dr Amy Duffy at Carolina Integrative Medicine in Clemson and we’ll have your website in the signment
