free from- diet

Can you afford to see the nutritionist again? They should be able to help you.

I'd go with rice, quinoa, and try things like either maize pasta, or 'vegetable pasta'.  The vegetable pasta has a name, and I'm sorry but at the moment I cannot remember it.  There is a new gluten-free bread in tesco that is supposed to be more like real bread, but it is a tad expensive.

Cutting out dairy, wheat, coffee and pork all at once must be quite restrictive for you.  Is it a permanent cut from the diet, or just for a short period of time to be able to see what you react to?

Agree with LMH about Orgran. Available in almost all Holland and Barretts.

I found spelt in Morrisons today LMH!

You might find this thread interesting/useful, it's pretty much along the same lines.

linky thing to thread for coeliacs

I don't bother with the wheat-free pasta as it is (mainly) disgusting - I prefer rice.  If you have to avoid wheat, but not gluten, then you can eat oats - which is not quite so restricting.

If you want more info, try searching under gluten-free/coeliac as I think that you might find more info there than "free-from".

Spelt is unfortunately, a form of wheat, so if you're on a w-f diet, it would be out.

You could always contact the coeliac disease society, they provide guides on what you can/can't eat if you have coeliac disease - that might give you some more info.

Just out of interest, how did the nutritionist come up with that list of foods to avoid?

I hate to say it, but that type of testing is completely unvalidated and, IMO, a total waste of money. Research has shown that it consistently fails to identify people with clinically diagnosed allergies. If it can't find those (which are relatively easy to pick up) how on earth is it meant to be accurate in detecting intolerances?

I can completely understand why you want to find the source of the problem, but cutting out all wheat and dairy (I'm not so bothered about the pork - you can cope just find without pork products) is quite restrictive and will have dietary implications. What source of calcium did the nutritionist recommend? Lots of micronutrients are consumed in wheat-based foods (you can of course make do without - I myself am coeliac, so know what I'm talking about ) so you do stand the risk of losing out on those, not to mention the increased cost of buying wheat-free products.

Any nutritionist worth their salt would never recommend that you cut out such a wide range of products all at once - how are you meant to know if you're sensitive to one particular food if you've cut out dozens? Far better to follow a proper elimination diet - cut out one food, i.e. pork. See if your symptoms improve. If they do, great. Then you reintroduce the food (a food challenge) and see if the symptoms come back. If they do, you know for certain that pork is the culprit and remove it from your diet. Repeat for wheat, then dairy (or whatever order you fancy). Never all at once. Unscientific, unhelpful to the patient and potential unnecessarily restrictive.

I'll get off my soap box now  

I would say only a properly regulated blood test that measures IgE levels (and perhaps at a push IgG levels) is an acceptable reason to cut out a food group. I agree entirely with what Sarah the Bookworm says. trying to live without certain foods in a world that simply doesn't cater for you is a pain in the arse and unless you have a definitive medical diagnosis and reason to do it, I would exercise extreme caution.

If you cut dairy you run the risk of becoming calcium deficient and increase your risk of osteoporosis in later life (amongst other things) unless you supplement your diet with calcium and vit D. You seem to be avoiding a lot of foods and this could imbalance your nutritional make up more than you realise.

I don't want to scare you, but almost all of these tests have been shown to be completely bogus. Only  Yorktest came out with any credibility whatsoever and that involves sending a sample of blood to a private lab for analysis. It doesn't test for allergy though - only measures IgG levels.

I agree with LB and Sarah with regard to the testing in particular.

Go and see a dietitian!

Not that I'm biased at all...

Hairdressing