Why you Always Read Labels - The Accidental Gluten Slip-Up

Have you ever had that moment where you realize—too late—that you forgot to read the label? Yeah… that was me last week. After years of being so careful, I let my guard down with a product that looked gluten-free. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. In this episode, I’m sharing what happened, what I wish I had done differently, and why it’s so important to always, always read the label—even when you think you already know what it says. Whether you’re newly diagnosed or years into this journey, this episode is your friendly reminder to stay vigilant—and extend yourself grace when things go sideways.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Accidental Gluten Exposure
• 2:52 How I Got Glutened By Mislabeled Beer
• 6:32 Importance of Reading Labels Every Time
• 9:57 Symptoms When You've Been Glutened
• 11:47 Recovery Tips After Gluten Exposure
• 14:43 Episode Wrap-Up and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 0:26

Quick reminder before we get started on this episode. This podcast is based on my personal experiences and isn't medical advice. Have you ever had that moment where you realized too late that you forgot to read the label? Yes, that was me last week. After years of being so careful, I let my guard down with a product that looked gluten-free Spoiler alert. It wasn't, and in this episode, I'm sharing what happened, what I wish I'd done differently and why it's so important to always, always, read the label, even when you think you already know what it says. Whether you're newly diagnosed or years into this journey of being gluten free, this episode is your friendly reminder to stay diligent and extend yourself grace when things go sideways. Let's get started. Welcome to the Gluten-Free Engineer Podcast. I'm your host, Saunders.

Carrie Saunders: 1:17

In 2011, I was diagnosed with celiac disease, a moment that changed everything, but I was determined not to let it hold me back. With my two engineering degrees, I set out to reverse engineer the gluten-free lifestyle, breaking down recipes, safety tips, travel hacks and everything in between to rebuild a life I love. Whether you have celiac disease, gluten intolerance or simply choose to live gluten-free, this podcast is for you. Join me each week as we simplify the gluten-free lifestyle. Make it fun and prove that you don't have to miss out on anything. Welcome back to the show. So last week I got gluten. I got gluten pretty badly. I would say that the symptoms, as of this recording, are still affecting me, and it's been about three days already so far and I want to talk about, you know, what is it really like to get gluten and how did I make this mistake?

Carrie Saunders: 2:12

So long story short, my husband likes to try different types of hard ciders and we, you know, kind of enjoy, you know that, taste testing and seeing what they taste like. And he picked up what he thought was a hard cider because the label looked, you know, like it was a hard cider. It didn't look like a typical beer or anything like that, and while I just gave you the hint, it was actually a beer. It was a sour beer and we didn't realize this until after he'd already had what cost? You know, several days, one or two and I decided to taste it. I was like, oh well, let's see what this tastes like, because it was some really kind of off weird flavor. I think it had passion fruits, like fruit punch, passion fruit or something like that. So I thought, oh well, let me try it. And it was green, like it didn't even look like a beer, it looked like a cider, it was like fluorescent green. And I tried a sip on one night and then the next night or the next day I tried he, I tried another sip of it, not knowing it was. It was a wheat ale, it was a sour ale, is what it actually was, which is why, one, it didn't taste like beer even when he drank it. And and two, the the label was so colorful and it was near the hard ciders in our store so we thought it was a hard cider.

Carrie Saunders: 3:32

Well, I start reading the label after he's already had one or two across. You know these, you know several days, and like, I realized it said a sour ale on it and I couldn't find the words gluten-free anywhere and I realized that it was, you know, a gluten beer. And this was like the next morning where I'd had one sip the night before and then we were out swimming in our pool and I had another sip that day and I thought, oh crap, I just had wheat. I wonder what's going to happen, because it's been a while since I've directly had wheat and the thing about, you know, alcoholic beverages is. It kind of varies as to how much gluten still ends up in those beverages as well. So I was kind of crossing my fingers and hoping much of it got distilled and filtered out, but I didn't know how I was going to react.

Carrie Saunders: 4:23

Well, that was a Sunday afternoon. The next morning I even went into the house and took some digest pills, even though I realized, you know, it might have been too late for that. But I figured, well, it can't hurt, right. So the next day, my goodness Monday morning, I woke up and of course I had digestive issues. That to me, honestly, isn't nearly as big a deal as the other issues I get. I was, I felt like I'd been run over by a bus. My whole body hurt, my brain wasn't functioning, my joints hurt. I thankfully didn't get a migraine from this one. Sometimes I'll get migraines from when I get gluten, especially if it's barley. So I'm assuming this was probably a wheat ale instead of sour ale. So I'm not 100% sure it was wheat or barley or rye. And I mean I just I felt awful for the first couple hours, three or four hours or so of my day. I was having a hard time working because I was so off. My senses were overloaded. I couldn't take too much input either. Noise wise, you know, information wise, light wise my senses were just overloaded.

Carrie Saunders: 5:36

So what I want to encourage you to do is you know, obviously we're really intelligent label readers, but it can even happen to us. We just kind of let our guard down and didn't look at the label, and so I want to make sure that you know, we don't. You know, you guys out there listening, don't fall into the trap that we did and get comfortable and feel like you know, oh, it looks like it's gluten-free, so it's probably gluten-free, like in this case, because the label was totally not what you would see on a typical beer label and we let our guard down and got sick. I mean, he even didn't feel good either, and he kept wondering why he wasn't feeling good randomly. Well, it was probably because he was drinking gluten.

Carrie Saunders: 6:19

So I want to encourage you to make sure you read the labels every time. You don't know whether it's got malt flavoring added to it, which could be something that can happen on even you know other types of drinks that we're talking about here. We want to make sure that you know when we're talking about food. It doesn't have a wheat based thickener. Whenever you see labels like new look same great taste. This could be anywhere from alcoholic beverages to normal food we want to make sure that it's still the same label. This is actually.

Carrie Saunders: 6:54

This episode is making me want to make sure that I double check all the labels, no matter whether it's a trusted brand or not, one that I've eaten for years or not, especially if it's not a dedicated gluten-free brand. So I encourage you to take this lesson that I had and still look at those labels, especially, like I said, it's not a gluten-free, dedicated gluten-free brand. Make sure it's still gluten-free. You want to also make sure that they haven't added a process in a facility that also processes wheat when they didn't used to have it. Double check those things just in case, and we want to make sure that we are reading the labels every time so that you don't make the same mistake that I did.

Carrie Saunders: 7:35

And we want to, you know, keep our bodies safe and not have the inconvenience. You know I'm still dealing with the aftermath Days later. I don't have, thankfully, the body aches. My body's kind of not quite right, but I don't have those that flu-like kind of body ache symptoms, but I'm still having digestive symptoms. It's been three days and I still don't have it completely out of my body.

Carrie Saunders: 8:02

So we want to look at that ingredients list. We want to look for the obvious things like wheat, barley, rye, malt, brewer's yeast. Those are the common things. We want to look for the obvious things like wheat, barley, rye, malt, brewer's yeast. Those are the common things we want to look at. And then we want to also look for hidden gluten terms like hydrolyzed wheat, proteins kind of hard to say modified food starch especially if it's not labeled gluten-free or natural flavors If there's no allergen disclosure, natural flavors could be anything they want it to be.

Carrie Saunders: 8:29

And then I encourage you to read At the bottom of the label, for it contains weed or may contained or process in a facility with. And I encourage you to look for certified gluten free labels. That's what we generally do. Generally, most of everything that I eat is certified gluten free. That way I will make sure that I'm safe being celiac, and you know, sometimes I'll go and get something that doesn't say certified gluten-free if I'm pretty confident in their processing methods. But that's always the safest way to look for it and recheck anything labeled new or has updated packaging. I know this is something that's triggered me to look at the labels before, just to be sure, so I encourage you to do that as well. So then, what happens when you get gluten? So what are the things encourage you to do that as well? So then, what happens when you get gluten? So what are the things that you can do?

Carrie Saunders: 9:19

So, whether you're celiac or gluten intolerant, this accidental exposure can create, you know, lots of symptoms, and it varies person to person. It could be headaches or migraines. Luckily, I didn't have one this time. You can have fatigue that lasts for days. I know I have actually been having a hard time waking up in the morning. Once I'm asleep, I, my body, doesn't want to wake up. Right now. My gut is definitely inflamed, um, bloating and pain. I was in so much pain on Monday, just in general. My gut was just so mad at me. Uh, I don't know how else to describe it Other than it just felt like hot and like a fire inside. Mood changes for sure. You know.

Carrie Saunders: 9:58

I warn people, if I've gotten gluten, to just take whatever I say with a grain of salt, because I never know what's going to come out of my mouth. It really can cause me some mood issues. Luckily, this time I recognized it pretty quickly because I knew I had accidentally got gluten and I was kind of waiting for whatever symptoms might show up would show up. But you know, know that you could cause mood swings with you. You could be really sad, you could be really angry, you could be I've been really jumpy this week. It's been easy to scare me and I'm not a jumpy person. It can also cause skin flare ups or rashes. So just know that these things could be happening, could happen to you when you're gluten. Even just a small, tiny crumb can be just enough. I literally had two tiny, small sips across between like you know what, two days and it was enough to just really set off my system.

Carrie Saunders: 10:53

So there's some things that you can do to recover and this is like when I got, you know, gluten accidentally, you know, a few days ago, and so I took digest pills as soon as I realized it, so that I could help my body digest whatever might still be left in my system. Hydrating, you know, really hydrating can really help. I've been super thirsty the past few days, so even my body has been having the instinct of drinking a lot more. You can also add some electrolytes if you'd like, some herbal teas that are gentle to your body and then also nourishing yourself. I tend to find that I do better when I flush the food out with food behind it.

Carrie Saunders: 11:34

So I tend to try to really, you know, eat a decent amount after I've been glutened, to trying to help just kind of push the stuff out of my system and just get it out. So I eat things that I know are a hundred percent safe, that are generally comforting to me from a mental standpoint too, because I don't feel good, right, I don't feel good because I got gluten. So I tend to try to cater to some things that are more emotionally comforting to me when I'm trying to flush out gluten and then resting, I've been, you know, letting myself have some grace when I get up in the morning, letting myself lay in bed a little bit longer and just giving myself some time to wake up. You can also support your gut with prebiotics and digestive enzymes, like I mentioned earlier. Also, anti-inflammatory foods are really great for you, like ginger and turmeric, and give yourself grace. I mean I, you know I made a mistake. I haven't made that big of a mistake in years. I can't remember the last time that I did that, but it can still happen. You know to me who's been known I've been celiac for 12-ish years or so. No, it can happen to the best of us. Give yourself grace, learn from it. We're definitely looking at all the labels from now on, no matter what we're buying, because it was just something I don't want to go through again If I can avoid it. It's just not a comfortable situation to be in. So give yourself some grace, learn from it. And you know, look towards. You know how can we, you know, take the next steps here? What will we do differently? How do we prevent this from happening? Don't, you know, beat yourself up for being silly or stupid or whatever you want to call it, cause it was kind of not a smart move to not look at the labels in some new brand that we were trying. You know why. We could have been down on ourself for doing that, but instead we're looking at it as a learning opportunity and how can we do better, and not beating ourself up for making a mistake, because mistakes can happen, but we've got to just try to be as diligent as we can. So hopefully that helps you on your next journey out to the store when you're wanting to try some new products and even some old trusted standbys. Make sure you're just double-checking those labels just in case something has changed or you're making an assumption, like we did.

Carrie Saunders: 14:00

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Gluten-Free Engineer. If you found value in this story, please share it with someone who might need encouragement on their own gluten-free journey. For more tips, recipes, resources and even links to my YouTube channel, head on over to theglutenfreeengineercom. It's your one-stop hub to make gluten-free living simple, fun and full of flavor. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss out on an episode. And we will see you next week. The Gluten-Free Engineer podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. I share my personal experiences and stories about living with celiac disease and navigating a gluten-free lifestyle. This podcast does not provide medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional for medical questions, concerns or advice specific to your health.