by Melissa Diane Smith

It has been close to two-and-a-half years since I began Nutrition News & Notes. Many of you come to this site looking for gluten-related information, but sometimes miss earlier posts I have written about gluten sensitivity, celiac disease or the gluten-free diet. I find it pays to do a little review of the information every so often. So, here is a roundup of the gluten-related stories you might have missed. Click on the links below to read the full stories.

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My new book Gluten Free Throughout the Year received high marks in two new book reviews by correspondents who regularly write about gluten-free living and gluten-free books. One appeared on About.com, a part of The New York Times Company, and the other appeared on Examiner.com.

Here are excerpts from the About.com review by Teri Gruss:

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To coincide with the release of my new book Gluten Free Throughout the Year, I am hitting the book tour trail, spreading the word in a number of different ways.

It all starts Wednesday, May 12th, at www.Celiac.com with my first author interview about the book. I am very pleased to have a leading site in the gluten-free movement and industry, www.Celiac.com as the first “stop” on my Virtual Book Tour. (In case you were wondering, a Virtual Book Tour is a tour in which an author visits websites and blogs instead of traveling across the country to bookstores.) Be sure to “travel” along with me by going to this link, so you can read the interview and learn a lot more about the book, why I wrote it, and how the format of the book came to be.

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I am very pleased to announce the release of my new book, Gluten Free Throughout the Year: A Two-Year, Month-to-Month Guide for Healthy Eating. I wrote the book as a companion guide to Going Against the Grain for the many people who asked for it. The primary focus is to help people on a gluten-free diet, but it’s also useful for people who want to lose weight or who follow a reduced-carbohydrate diet. Below is a summary of the information in the book followed by quick answers to several questions I am asked most often about the book by my clients and readers.

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Eating gluten free at picnics, while traveling, when you’re sick, and during holidays. All this and more is covered in the first ever gluten-free book of its kind, Gluten Free Throughout the Year. The book has:

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The podcast interview that Jimmy Moore of The Livin’ La Vida Low Carb Show did with me is now available! Jimmy is doing a great job spreading the word about the health benefits of low-carb diets, I love his enthusiastic personality, and I really enjoyed being on his show. He and I had a wonderful chat and we covered a lot of territory about the many unadvertised troubles with grains. If you have not yet read my Going Against the Grain book (or if you just need a little refresher on the information), the interview is a good overview of many of the topics I cover in that book. The interview runs less than an hour, and the many subjects we discussed in that time include:

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The Southern Arizona Celiac Support (SACS) Gluten-Free Food Faire this Saturday, April 24, is going to be bigger and better than ever, and I will be there signing copies of my Going Against the Grain book and handing out flyers about my soon-to-be-released book, Gluten Free Throughout the Year: A Two-Year, Month-to-Month Guide for Healthy Eating. If you still haven’t gotten a personally autographed copy of Going Against the Grain or if you’d like to be one of the first to see the cover of my new book, be sure to stop by my booth. Also at the faire will be lots of gluten-free foods to sample, raffles for gluten-free food items and donated goods, and a silent auction. SACS will be selling two very helpful items, maps indicating GF restaurants in the Tucson area and restaurant cards that help make ordering in restaurants an easier process.

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by Melissa Diane Smith

Three types of genetically modified (GM) corn that have been approved for human consumption have been linked to organ damage in mammals, according to a new study.

Researchers from the Committee of Research and Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN) and the Universities of Caen and Rouen in France analyzed data that had been previously obtained to assess the effects on various organs in rats of three approved types of GM corn eaten for just 90 days. The corn varieties studied were NK 603, which had been genetically engineered to tolerate Roundup herbicide, and MON 810 and MON 863, which had been genetically engineered to produce two new insecticides. According to the researchers, these types of GM corn are potentially eaten by billions of people and animals worldwide.

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by Melissa Diane Smith

(Opinion) The decade of 2000 to 2009 was a breakthrough decade in our awareness and understanding of gluten intolerance.

In 2000, celiac disease was considered very rare and non-celiac gluten sensitivity was hardly on anyone’s radar screen (except for a few researchers’ and doctors’ – and mine as well. I published Going Against the Grain in 2002.)

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by Melissa Diane Smith

If you know wheat bothers you but have never been tested for gluten sensitivity or celiac disease and continue to eat wheat, you likely are putting your life at risk. A large 2009 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that people with diagnosed, undiagnosed and “latent” celiac disease (also called gluten sensitivity) have a higher risk of death, mostly from heart disease and cancer.

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by Melissa Diane Smith

If your doctor thinks there is no research to support gluten sensitivity that is not celiac disease, three new scientific abstracts published in a Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition supplement and presented at the annual NASPGHAN pediatric gastroenterology scientific meeting in mid-November might change his or her mind. Leading gluten researchers Alessio Fasano, MD, of the University of Maryland Center for Celiac Research was involved in two of the research reports, and Rodney Ford, MD, of the Children’s Gastroenterology Clinic in Christchurch, New Zealand, authored the other.

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