Foods to Avoid on a Gluten-Free Diet

4 of 11 in Series: The Essentials of Eating Gluten-Free

The key to a gluten-free diet is knowing what to avoid — whether you're dining out or making meals at home. Luckily, the list of forbidden foods for a gluten-free diet is a lot shorter than the list of safe foods.

Foods with gluten

Companies offer special gluten-free varieties of some foods, and those gluten-free varieties obviously don’t have gluten in them. But unless you’re buying specialty products, you can assume the following foods contain gluten:

• Baked goods — cookies, cakes, cupcakes, donuts, muffins, pastries, pie crusts, brownies, and everything else made with wheat flour

• Beer

• Bread, breadcrumbs, biscuits

• Cereal

• Communion wafers

• Cornbread

• Crackers

• Croutons

• Gravies, sauces, and roux

• Imitation seafood (for example, imitation crab)

• Licorice

• Marinades (such as teriyaki)

• Pasta

• Pizza crust

• Pretzels

• Soy sauce

• Stuffing

Forbidden grains for gluten-free eating

The grains you need to avoid on a gluten-free diet are

• Barley

• Oats (because of contamination issues)

• Triticale (a hybrid of wheat and rye)

• Rye

• Wheat

Avoid these grains and anything made with them — malt is often made from barley, for example, so you need to take malt vinegar out of your diet (not to mention malted milk balls!)