GLUTEN FREE AND SPORT…ALLIES? During the latest years, we have been hearing more and more about gluten free diet and sport performances: it looks like that in order to perform better in any sport, going on a gluten free diet, it’s an important step to take. At Baci di Dama, we have decided to investigate more about it. The most famous sport man who has started advocating that eating gluten free improved his performances is tennis player Novak Djokovic who also wrote a book about it: “Serve to Win: The 14-Day Gluten-Free Plan for Physical and Mental Excellence”. Djokovic also excluded ..read more

GLUTEN FREE DIET: SOMETHING MISSING?!? People who suffering from celiac disease or gluten intolerance have one solution to get better: go on a gluten free diet and eliminate all products with gluten from their daily regime. This will help the intestine to fully recover from the damages caused by gluten. Unfortunately this isn’t all. Very often going celiac disease for example can entail the lack of some precious nutrients like: Folic acid Vitamin B12 Vitamin D Calcium Iron Magnesium Zinc Deficiency of vitamin B12 is quite rare, however if it happens, it is important to eat cert ..read more

Mono di-glycerides of fatty acids Light and Shadows Today we often read about the mono- and di-glycerides of fatty acids and they have become so popular in the last fifty years that we might ask… why?!? Well, they are used in most of the processed foods that we can find at the grocery stores: they are employed by large companies manufacturing pasta, bread, cookies, sweets, chocolate, ice-cream, chewing gum and the list is really long whether we are speaking about gluten free products or products with gluten. These little ones are kind of “equally opportunity offender ..read more

DEGLUTINATED WHEAT STARCH As we’ve pointed out in an older post, starches are polymeric carbohydrates made of a large number of glucose units. Basically they can be found in cereals like wheat, root vegetables like potatoes and cassava, in beans, lentils, corn, rice, to name the most common staple foods. To get a starch out of an ordinary flour, it takes several steps: first grains have to become soft, so they are soaked in different liquids, then they are grinded, soaked once again and put in a centrifuge to separate the different parts like gluten for example. Some companies like Gi ..read more

ARROWROOT Lately a new gluten free food has appeared on the scene and with a name like that, at Baci di Dama we got quite curious about it. Elisa, our nutritionist, tells us what it is all about. The arrowroot is so called because in ancient times it was used as an antidote against the poison in enemies’ arrows. Today it is still used to neutralize the poison of some spiders and scorpions. Food is our first medicine after all and it can act like one. The arrowroot is a starch that comes from some tropical plants, in particular from the Maranta arundinaceae, a plant that we can find in ..read more

A WORD IS IN THE AIR…ADDITIVES! I don’t know about you but at Baci di Dama we have the impression of hearing more and more magazines, people, friends talking about one topic in particular: food additives. Are they good? Are they bad? What are they for and why we end up finding them in most of the foods that we eat and buy daily??? Let’s try to make things more simple and clear. Food additives are substances added to food to preserve flavour or enhance its taste and appearance, to help the food be fresh for a longer period of time. In Europe, the EEC (European Economic Community) has d ..read more

WHEAT, A FRIENDLY FRIEND??! During the years, in Italy in particular, many researchers have been studying how to make wheat a friendly friend for people who suffer from celiac disease or are intolerant to gluten. In this article, at Baci di Dama, we decided to speak about one of the latest studies in Italy. The good news is that a group of researchers from Foggia, in the Puglie region (South of Italy) are studying a procedure that consists in treating wheat grains at very high temperatures by using micro waves and they saw that these temperatures can actually change both the “gli ..read more

GLUTEN FREE TRAVELS Being celiac or gluten intolerant should not be a problem when we travel even if sometimes it is the case, depending on where we choose to go. The important thing is to know that there are places out there that can supply us with all the information we might need. First thing first, there are the Celiac Associations in several European countries that are always willing to help travellers. You can have a look on the A.O.E.C.S. that groups all the European celiac associations. http://www.aoecs.org/. In Italy there is the AIC (http://www.celiachia.it/home/HomePage.asp ..read more

READING LABELS Food labels are the link between us and the products we buy everyday. We can see them as ID card and to learn to read them properly, it helps us to get to know better what lies there in front of us. They are an important tool to preserve our health and natural well being. To read the labels properly, we need to focus on few but important things like where the product comes from, who’s produced it, its shelf life and how to store it properly. However the most important pieces of information are the quantity and the quality of the ingredients. The ingredients are always l ..read more

STARCHES, WHAT ABOUT THEM?!? Starches represent the most important source of carbohydrates for our metabolism; they are a precious source of energy for us. Technically starches are long complex chains of monosaccharide that are the smallest molecule of the carbohydrates. Starches can be found in all the cereals, some tubers like potatoes and manioc, and also in pulses. When used in cooking, they tend to absorb the water and they can increase their size up to 20-30 times their volume. If they are heated up, they become jelly and act as thickening agents. They are important allies if we ..read more