Beware of the Gluten-Free Pasta

Some of you may have heard of nut-allergic people having reactions to a certain kind of gluten-free pasta. I had heard of this a long time ago from another nut-allergy mom, but I had not done more research on this.

Then, just the other day, a gluten-free blogger friend of mine sent me this article link. Apparently, a protein called lupin is found in some types of imported gluten-free pasta, mainly from Italy and Spain.

This story is an eye-opener! I had little idea of how pasta could cause an allergic reaction in nut-allergic people until I read this. It is a confounding new development to me, since sometimes a plate of plain pasta is a good "go-to" meal to order for my daughter when we visit a restaurant. Now, I'm questioning if that's such a great idea.

I'm very unclear on how much gluten-free pasta is used in restaurants, and plan to do more research on this and will share my findings here. Some of our gluten-free readers may know more about this. If so, please let us know!

Nothing personal to our gluten-free friends out there :), but it seems to me that GF items often pose problems to the nut-allergic. If you have nut allergies in your family, be very careful with these products! Often, nuts can be used to "fill in the gaps" when wheat cannot be part of the recipe.

I don't think that we need to necessarily skip the pasta at a restaurant, but it certainly gives us more to think about. (Like we needed more, right?? :))

I certainly don't want to freak anyone out with this, but I wanted to make us all aware.

BTW, I just noticed that my last post was my 100th post! I can't believe it. Thanks to everybody who reads this blog and who posts here. I hope you're getting as much out of it as I am.