Cross Contact Tips When You Have Celiac Disease Ep. 44

Living with Celiac Disease is not just as simple as avoiding eating gluten. We also have to be super careful of cross contact/contamination.
In today's episode I am sharing some simple tips with you to help you succeed.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:25

All right. Welcome back to the show guys. So on this week's episode, I want to talk further with you about cross contact or cross contamination. So here in Australia, we refer to it as cross contamination, but I know a lot of you guys in other countries call it cross contact. So I'm gonna switch and change between to wordings because I know that we all think about it differently. So in, um, other countries, aside from Australia, I know that you think of contamination as something different. So in the food industry, cross contamination is referred to, um, not as not gluten, it it's being used as a something else. So if something's contaminated it, it's not necessarily gluten, but here in Australia, that's what we call it. So if I, if I call it cross contamination, that's, I'm actually talking about cross contact. So I'll try and use cross contact as much as possible. But if I say cross contamination, I'm just referring to cross contact. So I hope that makes it all right. So let's talk about cross contact guys. So this is something that we need to be super vigilant of and super duper careful with. So my almost three year old today was walking around with a biscuit cookie, and she's bunching away on it and she eats normal food. Normal. Should I call it normal food? No gluten field food. She she's able to eat and she's fine at this stage. Um, so yeah, so anyway, she's walking around eating this biscuit and next thing I get past my water bottle and she goes, mom, it's empty. Can you fill it up? And she's taken a swig out of my drink bottle. And there was a crumb on my drink bottle. I nearly had a nervous breakdown. It's like, no, like no, the other kids know they're not to drink out of my water bottle because, well, my son's okay because he's gluten-free as well. But my kids just know not to drink outta my water bottle. And she, well, she's only nearly three. So I can't, I can't blame her too much, but you know, that's one way of getting cross contaminated or cross contact because she's put her crumbs on the mouthpiece of my drink bottle. It's a straw drink bottle, but still they were on there. So things like that we have to be super vigilant of. So that's just one very thing that we've gotta be careful of that we don't let other people drink out of our drink bottles, our cups, our glasses, because right there, you know, that's cross contact straight up. I, I saw it on my drink bottle. So even me today, 13 years on from living with celiac disease, it's still happening. I've still gotta be vigilant of it. So I know many of you have a completely 100% gluten free kitchen. And I think that's wonderful. I think, um, I think that's a great goal for many people. It doesn't work in our family and in all honesty, my, my daughter, the youngest, her name's Coda, she does eat more gluten free than gluten for that exact reason, because I just can't trust her with cross contact. So<laugh> yeah, that, that is something that I, I probably would like to do more of is just no gluten for her, but because she hasn't been diagnosed with celiac disease, I do wanna keep having a bit of gluten in her diet for that reason. So that if, if any symptoms show up, we can get her tested. So anyway, so that's one thing. So not sharing, drink, bottles, cups, glasses, that type of thing. Okay. Another thing is, is very important is to make sure you have separate condiments. So when it comes to your condiments in your kitchen, whether it be butter, whether it be your, um, mayonnaises, your breakfast spreads, all of those different types of things, we need to make sure that we have separate versions for our, because we do not want people in our family or roommates, flatmates, whatever, spreading their bread with your condiments, because if they get their bread crumbs into your spreads, that's cross contact right there. So in our family, we have two butter containers. We use a product called nutle, which is dairy free. And we have one with black, big black gluten free stickers on it. And the other one doesn't have any stickers on it. So we know that that one's the one that, um, my daughters get to use and my husband and then my son and I, we have the gluten free one. And then we have the exact same jam jar, but we have one on the top shelf in the fridge and we have one on another shelf in the fridge. And the one that my son and I use is the one with the gluten free label on it. So we keep them separate in the fridge. We keep them labeled. We make sure that they're safe. So, so make sure you label your condiments to make sure you tell people that you live with that. If anything's got gluten-free on it, do not touch it, leave it alone. Another good tip can be to put it in a plastic box or plastic container and has a lid on it. And you pop it in the fridge and you might even write your name on it. So do not touch blends. You know, don't go there. So depending on who you live with, depends on how much support you need in that area. So these are just some ideas, depending on who you live with. If someone has to physically get the jam out of a box, that's got a lid on it compared to grabbing the one that's right there in front of their face, on the shelf. They're gonna go for the one that they can see. So let it, let it be really easy for them that they can grab the one that's already out of the box. And they're not rumaging through your staff to look for it. So that's a really easy way to make it extra safe for you. Now, another one barbecues. So, uh, here in Australia, we call it a barbecue. I believe in other countries, you guys call it a grill. So if you are, you know, grilling up your meat or whatever, or you are going to someone else's house for a barbecue, it can be risky taking your meat and putting it on someone else's barbecue because the, they may have had some crumbed meat or something like that on there. And as you hopefully know, heating gluten, doesn't kill it. It doesn't kill the gluten. So if you have something at a super high heat on the barbecue, it doesn't actually kill the gluten. It doesn't kill that protein. It's still the air. And if that sticks to your meat and you eat it, you can get cross contact from that. So my suggestion is you go and find yourself and buy. It's a, it's basically a barbecue heat pad. So you put it on top of the barbecue and you cook your barbecue meat on top of that. If you're a, if you're a camper as well, it's really great to take to public barbecue sites or, um, you know, picnic grounds where there's public barbecues. You put it on top of that. You don't have to worry about cleaning it. You don't have to worry about anyone cross contact on your barbecue food. So that's an excellent item to have in your kit for out and about. Or if you get invited to friends, places, and you just don't wanna have that risk of getting cross contact from there. So they're, they're a super awesome product to have. So for those of you in Australia, I know you can get them from places like Anaconda and places like that. So, yeah. Or if, if you need to, you can either shop online and find something like that pretty easily as well. I'm sure Amazon would have something like that, that you could find quite, quite easily online. All right. So the number one thing, I'm sure you already know this, but I'm just gonna mention it. Wooden utensils, wooden chopping boards. They're amazing for sucking in the gluten and getting stuck there. So, you know, using separate wooden spoons, using separate chopping boards, that's an easy one. Make sure you keep them separate from anyone that's using gluten and keep them just for yourself. Uh, you can buy labeled versions of these items. I've seen, um, people sell gluten free chopping boards and it's, it's basically got like a gluten free logo kind of burnt into it, if that makes sense. So, you know, it makes it really obvious for, for other people that that is a gluten free chopping board. So don't use it. There should be no confusion at which on to use. So in our household, we have plastic chopping boards that can go in our dishwasher. So washed at a very high heat. And that's what we use for chopping anything. That's got gluten in and they go straight in the

Speaker 2: 9:19

Dishwasher after they've been rinsed in the sink. So something definitely to look out for now, if you have a toaster, so you can use toaster bags for toasting your bread, to keep it safe. Again, you can buy those online. You can buy them in discount stores, some supermarkets sell them. And basically what it is. You put your bread inside the toaster bag. You put the toaster bag inside your toaster, and you've got no risk of any crumbs from other gluten bread, getting on your toast. Now these are awesome for traveling with and fantastic. If you live in a household where you have no idea, who's using the toaster and who's putting what in there, just to keep this self safe. I was using these religiously, um, for years, but I recently just bought myself a new toaster. And that way I've got my own toaster with my own slots on it, that I keep just by myself and my son. And then my family uses two slots for themselves. So it's label, it's safe and we don't have to worry about anyone risking anything there. All right, next dish, cloth, how gross a dish cloth<laugh> we wash our dish cloths very regularly. Some people use disposable ones, but we are not a disposable family. We like to look after the environment as much as possible. And we use dish cloths that we wash. So we wash them quite regularly. However, when we're cleaning up gluten, we use a separate dish cloth to our normal one, and that gets thrown straight in the wash. So that's something to look out for as well, because yeah, it's just, it's just gross.<laugh> how easily gluten gets spread through dish cloths and spread through the kitchen. Now, when you are doing the dishes, this is one that can be quite risky as well is if you are, if you don't have a dishwasher, then I would recommend that you rinse off any dishes that have got gluten and on them. And you wash your gluten free dishes first, and then you wash the gluten field dishes last and rinse them all off at the end. If you've got a dishwasher that makes it so much easier because you can wash your dishes at such a high heat. So I do recommend that you wash your dishes, um, often like rinse them off in the sink first, and then you put them in the dishwasher. So you don't have, you know, that gross gluten swell around in your dishwasher. So it just, it just eliminates as much as possible before it goes into the dishwasher. So I hope that this helps you guys think about some areas to be of if you haven't already. And if not, I hope it's a great reminder of what to keep an eye out for. Because like I said, every day,<laugh>, I'm still doing the same thing. I'm still keeping an eye on my kids and what other people are doing in my household. So hope that helps. And I will talk with you again next week. Have a fantastic week and I'll talk with you then take care. Bye.