Newly diagnosed with celiac disease

What to do first, what can wait, and the three mistakes almost everyone makes in the first month.

Do not start a gluten-free diet before testing is complete. Both the blood antibody test and the biopsy depend on active gluten exposure, and going gluten free first is the most common reason people end up without a firm diagnosis. That leaves you with a lifetime of ambiguity, and in many countries with the loss of prescription and tax relief that a formal diagnosis unlocks.

Week one

Finish testing before changing your dietSerology and biopsy both require gluten in the diet to be accurate.

Ask for a referral to a dietitian with celiac experienceNutrient deficiencies at diagnosis are common and specific: iron, B12, folate, vitamin D, zinc.

Ask about a bone density scanMalabsorption at diagnosis often means low bone density that is worth knowing about early.

Get your baseline antibody numbers in writingThey are how you will later tell whether the diet is working.

Week two: the kitchen

Replace the toaster, colander and wooden spoonsThese specific items retain gluten through washing.

Move to squeeze bottles for shared condimentsA knife going back into the butter is a repeated daily exposure.

Give yourself a labelled shelfAbove the wheat products, so nothing falls into your food.

Do not throw out the whole kitchenGlass, metal and ceramic clean completely. Only porous and scratched items need replacing.

Week three: food that is already safe

Start from what you can eat, not from substitutes. It is cheaper and less demoralising.

The whole perimeter of the supermarketProduce, meat, fish, eggs and dairy. Almost none of it needs a label.

Rice, corn, potatoes, beans, lentilsThe staple base of most of the world's cooking.

Cuisines that were never wheat-basedMuch of Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican and Ethiopian cooking starts from rice, corn, lentils or teff.

Substitutes, sparinglyGluten-free bread and pasta are the most expensive and least nutritious part of the diet. They are a treat, not a foundation.

The three common mistakes

Going gluten free before testingThe most consequential and the least reversible.

Replacing every wheat food with a gluten-free versionExpensive, often lower in fibre and higher in sugar, and it keeps the diet feeling like a deprivation.

Over-restricting out of anxietyMaltodextrin, modified food starch, distilled vinegar, MSG, buckwheat and teff are all safe. Avoiding them costs variety and buys nothing.

Also worth knowing

First-degree relatives should be screenedBetween 5% and 22% of them have it too, and most do not know.

Antibody levels are rechecked, not guessed atTypically at 6 and 12 months. Falling numbers are the objective evidence the diet is working.

Healing takes longer than feeling betterSymptoms often improve in weeks; villous recovery in adults commonly takes a year or more.

Lactose intolerance at diagnosis is usually temporaryLactase lives on the villi that were damaged. It generally returns.

Check it in the aisle instead

Point CiCi at the barcode on anything on this list and get this same reasoning in about two seconds, plus the carbs and whether it has been recalled. 360,000+ packaged foods are already read and waiting.

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Food guides

Each guide covers a whole aisle and explains the mechanism, which is more portable than any list of names.

Gluten-free breadOrdinary bread is wheat and contains gluten. Gluten-free bread is a separate product category built from rice, sorghum, tapioca and starch blends. The…Gluten-free beerOrdinary beer is brewed from barley and contains gluten. Two different things sit on the shelf labeled for gluten-avoiders. Beer brewed from sorghum o…Gluten-free soy sauceMost soy sauce is not gluten free. Conventional soy sauce is brewed from roughly equal parts soybean and wheat, and the wheat is fundamental to the fe…Gluten-free oatsOats contain no gluten of their own, but the answer changes by country and by supply chain. In the US and EU, oats labeled gluten-free are permitted; …Gluten-free candyMost hard candy, most gummies and most plain chocolate are gluten free. Four things decide the rest: wheat flour in wafers and cookie pieces, barley m…Gluten-free sauces and condimentsCondiments are where gluten hides most reliably. Soy sauce is a wheat product, most Worcestershire outside the US contains malt vinegar, gravy and rou…

Other lists

Hidden sources of glutenThe ingredients that contain gluten without naming a gluten grain. It explains why careful label-readers still get sick.Gluten-free foods that sound like they aren'tIngredients people cut out unnecessarily. Over-restriction has a real cost, and this list is here to give some of that food back.Naturally gluten-free foodsWhole foods that never contained gluten in the first place. They are the cheapest and safest way to eat, and they sidestep the 183% price premium on labeled gluten-free products.Grains that contain glutenThe gluten grains, every alias they travel under, and the one grain whose answer changes depending on which country you are in.Gluten-free grains, seeds and floursThe complete list of grains, pseudocereals, seeds and flours that contain no gluten, including several that databases and older guides get wrong.A gluten-free shopping listA working list for a first shop after diagnosis, organised the way a supermarket is. The few things in each aisle that need checking are called out.Gluten-free alcoholWhich drinks are gluten free, which are not, and why distillation changes the answer even when the starting grain does not.Eating gluten free at chainsChains are more predictable than independents, and that predictability cuts both ways. What to ask, what almost always fails, and why a published allergen menu is not the same as a safe kitchen.

19 ingredients on this list

Every one of them is checked automatically when you scan a product — along with everything else on the label, and every rule that fires. Unlimited scans, free.

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The scanner

Reading a page is fine. Standing in the aisle is the hard part.

This site answers the question you knew to ask. The app answers the one you didn't: the barley malt in a rice cereal, the wheat starch in a gummy. Scan the barcode, or photograph the panel when the barcode isn't in any database, and CiCi shows which words on the label produced the answer.

360,000+ packaged foods already read. Ingredient statement, allergen declaration and nutrition panel, each one assessed by the same rules you can see working on this page, so most scans are an instant answer rather than a lookup.
Unlimited scanning, about two seconds an answer. Fig and Spoonful both cut you off at five scans a month.
Carbs and the full nutrition panel on every scan. Total and net carbohydrate with the arithmetic shown. For the roughly 6% of people with type 1 diabetes who have coeliac disease too, that is two apps collapsed into one.
Your glutening log. Record a reaction and CiCi shows what those days had in common. It counts overlaps and never tells you what caused it.
Saved products. The regular shop in one place, so next week is not a re-scan of the same forty items.
Scanning happens on your device. No scan is ever attached to you, sold, or sent to an analytics service.

Try it free for 14 days →See pricing

14 days free, then $29.99 a year. Cheaper than Fig, and it does what three separate apps do. This website stays free forever either way: every answer on it, permanently, with no account.

Sources
Beyond Celiac — facts and figures
Celiac Disease Foundation