You try to eat gluten free, you get sick. You eat packaged food with listed ingredients, you get sick. After this you get frustrated, I'm only eating damn white rice and boiled eggs, then you find a Magi (wheat) noodle at the bottom of your bowl of rice. You get sick. I'm starting to think Indian-born coeliacs just die.
Apparently this isn't always the case, see BMJ article, but awareness is recent and the spread of information is limited. It could take a generation of doctors and patients before knowledge about coeliac spreads. Much like Italy in Europe, the first awareness is in the wheat centric regions of northern India. I'm guilty of the same mistakes mentioned in the article, I became coeliac in India and moved from doctor to doctor suspecting recurrent infections. It was only the UK blood test which revealed excess ttg gluten antibody levels, a food intolerance hadn't crossed my mind until this point.
The problem with staying gluten free in India is contamination and the hidden sources of gluten. Gluten can literally be hiding in your bowl of rice, with one careless stray wheat noodle. Simply having a rice based food, or ingredients list which doesn't include flour, is not enough. The worst culprit is 'hing'/asafoetida, which as a spice is ground with wheat flour. This is added to various curries, chutneys and pickles even in otherwise rice-based south India. After 7 days healthy on the beach it was my immune system which detected the hing. The telltale rasping breath, then the fatigue. I didn't know what it was, all I had done was add a bit of chili-lime pickle to spice up my daily veg-curry rice. It was googling a food blogger's work that revealed the hing, and lo and behold when I had a look in the kitchen, the chili pickle listed asafoetida. The same process repeated with the Indian snack containing fried gram flour noodles, which turn out to be not so pure gram (chickpea/lentil). The masala omelette (some masala mixes may contain wheat to prevent clumping/unscrupulous bulking). The stray noodle hiding in my bowl of rice was just to remind me that butch has nowhere to hide.
Fried food is a perpetual risk for coeliacs, this source of contamination isn't worth touching. As is the Indian love of Chinese flavours: fried rice, Manchurian and so on, which may include gluten-rich soy sauce.
There are then the regional traditions, tourist places will add bread to your omelette unless you ask otherwise. Unpalatable sweetened bread to suit the Indian market at that. The only option is to excise a safety zone of omelette which may have touched the bread and hope for the best. If you ask for an omelette without bread, you'll see the same omelette again. The only saving grace so far is that the local train catering has been serving the omelette and bread separately. The local variation on iced tea seems to be adding barley water, which is nice for non-coeliacs. I'll give credit to the local Starbucks which did give me a heads up on this tradition before the 'café coffee day' Apple refresher smacked me in the face.
For a summarised list of foods which are safe for coeliacs in India:
Coca cola
Fruit with skins
Boiled eggs with shell
May be safe, roll a dice, if less than 6 you survive:
White rice
Simple veg curry
Idli/dosage/masala dosa - usually safe but depends on the chutneys (asafoetida) or contamination
Papadum - unless it contains any flour or asafoetida
May be unsafe:
Chapati, roti, naan, pouri, samosa...
Chutneys/pickle. May be unsafe, asafoetida ground with wheat
Fried rice - soy sauce, gluten
Manchurian - soy sauce, gluten
Biryani: may have crispy breadcrumbs added for texture
Ice tea/local soft drinks: may contain barley water
Packaged crispy snacks with gram flour noodles - suspect wheat content (not listed)
Any fried/battered food: contaminated oil or flour.
Rava dosa - one reference for sometimes adding wheat flour.
Any powdered spices/spice mixes/masala (spice)
Masala omelette
Apparently this isn't always the case, see BMJ article, but awareness is recent and the spread of information is limited. It could take a generation of doctors and patients before knowledge about coeliac spreads. Much like Italy in Europe, the first awareness is in the wheat centric regions of northern India. I'm guilty of the same mistakes mentioned in the article, I became coeliac in India and moved from doctor to doctor suspecting recurrent infections. It was only the UK blood test which revealed excess ttg gluten antibody levels, a food intolerance hadn't crossed my mind until this point.
The problem with staying gluten free in India is contamination and the hidden sources of gluten. Gluten can literally be hiding in your bowl of rice, with one careless stray wheat noodle. Simply having a rice based food, or ingredients list which doesn't include flour, is not enough. The worst culprit is 'hing'/asafoetida, which as a spice is ground with wheat flour. This is added to various curries, chutneys and pickles even in otherwise rice-based south India. After 7 days healthy on the beach it was my immune system which detected the hing. The telltale rasping breath, then the fatigue. I didn't know what it was, all I had done was add a bit of chili-lime pickle to spice up my daily veg-curry rice. It was googling a food blogger's work that revealed the hing, and lo and behold when I had a look in the kitchen, the chili pickle listed asafoetida. The same process repeated with the Indian snack containing fried gram flour noodles, which turn out to be not so pure gram (chickpea/lentil). The masala omelette (some masala mixes may contain wheat to prevent clumping/unscrupulous bulking). The stray noodle hiding in my bowl of rice was just to remind me that butch has nowhere to hide.
Fried food is a perpetual risk for coeliacs, this source of contamination isn't worth touching. As is the Indian love of Chinese flavours: fried rice, Manchurian and so on, which may include gluten-rich soy sauce.
There are then the regional traditions, tourist places will add bread to your omelette unless you ask otherwise. Unpalatable sweetened bread to suit the Indian market at that. The only option is to excise a safety zone of omelette which may have touched the bread and hope for the best. If you ask for an omelette without bread, you'll see the same omelette again. The only saving grace so far is that the local train catering has been serving the omelette and bread separately. The local variation on iced tea seems to be adding barley water, which is nice for non-coeliacs. I'll give credit to the local Starbucks which did give me a heads up on this tradition before the 'café coffee day' Apple refresher smacked me in the face.
For a summarised list of foods which are safe for coeliacs in India:
Coca cola
Fruit with skins
Boiled eggs with shell
May be safe, roll a dice, if less than 6 you survive:
White rice
Simple veg curry
Idli/dosage/masala dosa - usually safe but depends on the chutneys (asafoetida) or contamination
Papadum - unless it contains any flour or asafoetida
May be unsafe:
Chapati, roti, naan, pouri, samosa...
Chutneys/pickle. May be unsafe, asafoetida ground with wheat
Fried rice - soy sauce, gluten
Manchurian - soy sauce, gluten
Biryani: may have crispy breadcrumbs added for texture
Ice tea/local soft drinks: may contain barley water
Packaged crispy snacks with gram flour noodles - suspect wheat content (not listed)
Any fried/battered food: contaminated oil or flour.
Rava dosa - one reference for sometimes adding wheat flour.
Any powdered spices/spice mixes/masala (spice)
Masala omelette
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