About our Healthy Gluten-Free Family
The Healthy Gluten-Free Family Story
Hi! My name is Karen, and I’m the mom in our Healthy Gluten-Free Family. This website and my posts and pictures on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter are labors of love that allow me to share a very personal journey with you. It’s a journey our family has taken together — learning, experimenting and sharing how to raise a healthy happy gluten-free family.
Please feel free to contact me 
Our Journey
In 2010 our younger son was diagnosed with Celiac Disease. Celiac is an autoimmune disease whereby the body cannot digest any amount of gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye. In fact, if gluten is ingested, the body responds by attacking the small intestine and inhibiting the absorption of nutrients. The only treatment is to adhere to a strict gluten-free diet. And so our journey began…
Flash back to 2010, when gluten and celiac were not household names and there were not nearly as many gluten-free products on the market as there are now. My son was five years old, and his favorite food was pasta (yikes!). There was no way he was not going to eat pasta! While that was his favorite food, and still may be, he was also my little foodie! He loves to try new foods and really enjoys the entire dining experience. We could not let Celiac stand in the way of that! So with all the passion of a mom, and a trained marketer, I threw myself into the gluten-free world. We tried every product we could get our hands on and experimented with endless recipes. Ultimately, we learned to cook and live gluten-free. And thus, to support him, we became the Healthy Gluten-Free Family.
My Food Philosophy
All the food we share on this site is 100% GLUTEN-FREE. Our son’s love of food inspires me to cook and share delicious, gluten free recipes — everything from snacks to dinners to holiday cookies! Nothing is off-limits. If he wants to try something, we make it! Personally, I’m a long-time vegetarian. I eat a mostly plant-based diet, but I’m constantly feeding a family of omnivores. What you’ll find is that we try to eat whole foods, real food, that it’s mostly healthy, but all #GLUTENFREE!
Shared Experiences
Over the last six years we’ve learned how to navigate playdates, school, sports and sleepovers, restaurants, travel by car, planes and boats, hotels, adventures and holidays. We’ve built a support group: along with two other women with children who have celiac disease, we run Raising Our Celiac Kids (R.O.C.K.) in Fairfield County, Connecticut (more on that later).
Through experimentation and research we’ve also identified some of our favorite products and brands, all of which I will share with you. Celiac is not without it’s challenges. It requires lots of planning, but two amazing upsides for us are that we’ve become part of an awesome celiac and gluten-free community, and we cook and eat healthy, fresh food every day!
A Little about Me Personally
I am a former beauty marketing executive who left the corporate world when our family moved out to the suburbs eight years ago. I’m a sports mom, a music mom, and a celiac advocate. I’m also passionate about living a healthy lifestyle. I’m a cardio junkie who actually enjoys taking spin classes. I practice yoga, I love taking walks with our dog, and I’m addicted to my daily green juice. While I am a city girl at heart, I’m equally in love with beach living, and I love to travel. And trite as it may sound, nothing makes me happier than spending the day with my family.
Goal of this Website
This website is the culmination of my passion for great tasting healthy food and our son’s need to eat gluten-free while trying out and enjoying lots of different foods. Ultimately I believe that education and awareness will help our child eat safely and stay healthy for the rest of his life.
It’s my hope that friends, followers and fans will think of this as a resource for everything from wonderful food ideas to tips on raising a celiac kid. Our objective is to inspire by sharing with you all we do and what we eat while living a happy, healthy and full life. Whatever we do, we do for the joy in it.
We hope you’ll share in it and share your stories with us too!
