Mono and diglycerides in whipping cream

[Guest guest]

Hello; I've been in this group for a little while but haven't

introduced myself yet. I've had problems with gluten for three years

(that I know of... possibly longer.) It was exposed during all the

testing when I came down with fibromyalgia. I have other food

allergies and intolerances beside it.

Anyhow, I've been eating very stringently gluten-free for about three

years, and I thought I knew all the label-reading tricks, but this one

slipped my notice.

I was shopping too late for most of the markets and needed cream, so I

picked up some Lucerne " whipping cream " from Safeway. After I put it

into soup I had a very unpleasant and profound reaction to it that

matched my experiences to eating wheat, before I started eating GF. I

hadn't yet read the labels on it, so I tried it again in isolation,

and had the same nasty sequence of symptoms (severe brain fog, severe

fatigue, severe aching, irritability, upset stomach).

Then I read the label and found out that it was not just cream, but:

cream, skim milk, mono and diglycerides, polysorbate 80, carrageenan

I looked up all of the ingredients and found out that mono and

diglycerides are often put into food using wheat as a carrier:

http://www.enabling.org/ia/celiac/monodiglycerides.html

The other ingredients seemed benign, but I challenged plain organic

cream and organic cream with carrageenan added over the next few days,

and didn't have anything like that reaction, though I was sensitived

enough that I had some of my " I am sensitive to dairy this week "

reactions. (Congestion, itching.) That faded in a few days. (I

tolerate dairy fairly well if I don't have lots of it.)

So just FYI. I hadn't known about mono and diglycerides! But I eat

mostly organic and simple foods so it's never come up before. Given

that in the past I've only had that set of symptoms when I was

knowingly eating wheat, I have to assume that there was wheat.