Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog about health, nutrition, and gluten free living at the Jersey Shore! I hope that this blog will serve as a place for good information, support and understanding about living life with special dietary needs.  My desire is that this will be a friendly place where you can come for valuable information and encouragement about proper nutrition and how it can lead to optimal health for you and your families.  I also will use this blog to share recipes and reviews of local restaurants and establishments that cater to those of us on the gluten-free diet.  First, though, a little about me and how this blog came to be.

For sometime now, I have been wildly interested in nutrition and health.  This came about because of a need to get to the bottom of some health issues that I was experiencing a few years back, that seemed to baffle my doctors.  After a few years of sheer hopelessness and desperation, I began to uncover many truths about the role that food plays in health and healing.  It was absolutely incredible to me when I began to alter my diet and see immediate health gains because of it.  This was after years of surgery and drugs that did little to improve my conditions.

Enter the gluten-free diet.

In November of 2008, I met with my naturopath who first introduced me to the nutritional research and tenets of Dr. Weston Price and the Price Pottenger Nutrition Foundation.  She stressed the importance of eating real foods, rich and dense in nutrients, and encouraged me to consider eliminating or minimizing grains from my diet.   Interestingly enough, my naturopath also did some food sensitivity tests on me, and they showed that I had a definite sensitivity to gluten, as does my son.  So as a family that day, with the support and guidance of an amazing doctor and friend, we made the decision to eliminate gluten from our diet.  The rest is history.

While we now consider ourselves to be gluten-free experts, it wasn't always this way.  I remember many exasperating moments of reading food labels in the grocery store aisle, trying to interpret "mystery" ingredients, feeling frustrated by the limited options while eating out, and just feeling very much alone and an outcast in my quest to maintain this way of life.  My hope is that this blog can help just one person feel less overwhelmed and more armed with knowledge and confidence about gluten free living. 

Whether you are completely new to this diet or an old pro, I welcome you and hope that you will find this blog a good resource for all things gluten free at the Jersey Shore.  I encourage your comments and feedback, so please let me know your thoughts and suggestions.

In health,
GFJG