Story time! I came home from a crazy long day and dinner was prepared by my family. I sat down, absolutely starving as I had forgot my lunch at home and proceeded to devour my food. For dinner we were having a prawn and coucous bowl which was delicious ! As I Spooned the last bite into my mouth my dad froze and said “Wait a minute, I don’t think couscous is gluten free”. I immediately panicked and googled it to find out that I had indeed just eaten gluten as couscous is made from semolina, which is a granule of durum wheat. After realizing there is really nothing I could do at this point I started to think of it as a sort of experiment to see how my body would react. In my research last week I learned about how once you remove gluten from your diet it is common that your body develops an intolerance to gluten and can loose its ability to digest it properly over time. When introducing gluten back into your diet it is important to do it little bits at time.
I would prefer not to share my experience of the morning aftermath of eating couscous for dinner but I think me being absent from class is an explanation in itself. If you’ve ever had food poisoning I would compare it to that. The rash on my chin developed just hours after dinner and I noticed my stomach being very bloated and uncomfortable. I was pretty shocked that just eating one meal with gluten in it caused this much suffering and I now realize that being gluten free is making a huge impact on my health. I think I was so used to this uncomfortable stomach and rash prior to going gluten free that I wasn’t aware of how it had completely disappeared until it rapidly came back in full force!
I’m feeling much better now and will be paying much closer attention to what I am eating especially when others make it for me!
