When you are diagnosed with Celiac disease or gluten intolerance, your life can become quite difficult if you don't know how or where to find food that is gluten free. The good news is that you can, it just takes a little effort on your part to learn how you can find the foods that you love, gluten free.

There is a long list of foods that contain gluten that you need to avoid. One of the items on that list is oats. That means that if you are gluten intolerant you can't eat anything that is made with oats. This includes:

* Cereal

* Cookies

* Breading on some frozen foods

Gluten free oats can't, or really shouldn't, advertise themselves as gluten free until they get a certificate from the GFCO (Gluten Free Certification Organization). The GFCO is a non-profit organization that is a part of The Gluten Intolerance Group.

They work with the FDA on occasion. They only check food for the presence of gluten and nothing else. They still urge you to seek out a professional doctor for all your medical and Celiac or gluten intolerance questions.

Get Groats instead of Oats

No that is not a typo. A "groat" is otherwise known as an "oat berry." They can be found mostly in health food stores, specialty food stores, and other online equivalents. They are round oats with hardly any gluten.

Just be sure to read the label carefully before purchasing. Groats are usually sold whole and you have to grind them yourself to make flour. However, many gluten free products are made with "oat groats," which you now know are gluten free oats. You can have buckwheat groats, millet groats as well as oat groats.

What About Real Oats?

There are, indeed, gluten free oats made of real oats. They do not contain gluten, perhaps because they are not flattened, processed or treated with addictives and preservatives. You can find these oats by their label which says, "Gluten Free Oats." However, you need to read the label for gluten content because usually these oats still contain small traces of gluten. Anything under 20 ppm (parts per million) is good, 10 ppm is great.

With all of that being said, there are some Celiacs and gluten intolerant people who do very well on fresh oats that haven't had anything added to them. The New England Journal of Medicine in 2004 concluded that a small to occasional eating of oats, either gluten free oats or not, did no harm to some Celiacs.

If you are curious as to whether or not you can eat a small amount of real oats or not, consult your physician. If not, try some of the alternatives I listed above.