Blogging for a cause: food allergies and celiacs

I was just contacted by the nice folks at Triumph Dining, publishers of the Essential Gluten-Free guide (which I reviewed a few months ago). They asked me to share this news with my readers, in order (1) give away those spiffy food allergy restaurant dining cards that I thought were so great and at the same time (2) raise awareness about celiacs disease. While I am fortunate not to have my gluten allergy be elevated to this level, it's important that regular non-allergic people understand just how serious food allergies can be! Every day people with celiacs are misdiagnosed and treated with all kinds of unnecessary medications and procedures because their physicians don't recognize celiacs. Some people actually get horribly sick over the course of years because their bodies are on the brink of starvation -- they literally can't absorb nutrients due to a gluten allergy.

No need to re-write how this idea was submitted to me, so here 'tis.

"Triumph Dining is giving away FREE American Dining Cards until the end of August. There’s absolutely no purchase necessary. Your readers can simply visit http://www.triumphdining.com/freediningcard.aspx to participate and get a free dining card.

The purpose of this give-away is to raise money for Celiac Disease Awareness. If we get 15,000 people to sign up for free dining cards, Triumph Dining will make a $10,000 donation in support of a national celiac disease awareness campaign. When we hit our goal, we'll ask you and the gluten free community to help us decide which non-profit(s) receives the donation.

We’re trying to build awareness on two fronts: With 15,000 more dining cards on the street, we’ll be educating more restaurants about the gluten free diet faster. And, with $10,000 funding behind a national campaign, we can diagnose and educate more Celiacs.

The FREE dining card offer is available at http://www.triumphdining.com/freediningcard.aspx and we’ll be posting regular progress reports on our blog at http://blog.triumphdining.com."

Share the word, people! Help yourself and others too, thanks. The FAQ.

The Essential Gluten-Free Guide

A few months ago,the lovely people at Triumph Dining sent me a copy of "The Essential Gluten-Free Restaurant Guide" to review. It's a handy dandy guide to finding gluten-free restaurants when you're planning to eat out, or out of town.

More than ironically, I've been traveling so much in the past month, I haven't had time to read it...and then when WAS I out on the road, I was pretty much restricted to walking distance from the hotel or convention center, so it wasn't as much help to my immediate needs. Oy vey!

So how did I rate it? Still very helpful. There is a great section up in the beginning about how to communicate with the restaurants...by being informative and helpful vs. hysterical. Then I looked up California, and rated the spots in my hometown, Los Angeles. It has a few very solid GF places, like Fritto Misto in Santa Monica, who can make "pasta" from steamed vegetables. Less helpful was that they listed "The Old Spaghetti Factory" as GF even though they serve....spaghetti? And could cause some pretty serious cross-contamination issues for celiacs. Puzzling. Although this book can't begin to cover the thousands of restaurants in each state, I think the most helpful info is the covering of chain restaurants like Claim Jumper, Outback Steakhouse and Cheesecake Factory, which are more likely to be in all neighborhoods, along with phone numbers to check the menu ahead of time. And it'll also help spur some ideas for TYPES of foods that are GF....like Indian and Mexican food.

There is also a "Gluten Free Mall" section in the back, which offered some new vendors that I have yet to explore, but am excited about. (Anyone tried Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Oats? Who knew? Oatmeal cookies, here I come!)

I thought the coolest part of the package were the laminated restaurant cards, which detailed in several languages (Spanish, Vietnamese, French) your food allergies so that you can share them with the servers and chefs.

Like with all food-related information, please keep in mind that menus and ingredients constantly change, so don't rely on this as gospel, more as a very detailed travel guide.

Thanks again Triumph Dining Guide, for helping to make eating out a little easier for food allergic folks.