gluten free

A heuristic approach to deciding what is safe to eat with celiac disease

by Dana Lewis

When you’re diagnosed with celiac disease, it is nice in the sense that you have a known issue (consuming gluten causes an autoimmune reaction and damage to your body) and that the solution is known: eating 100% gluten free. The challenge, though, is that “being gluten free” is not easy. Every food, every drink, every morsel – and even some non-food items – can risk cross-contamination, even if something itself is gluten free. There are countless decisions a day about what is safe to eat. And what many people don’t realize (and may find confusing from the outside) is that this decision process can change, over time or even on a day to day or situational basis.

I had been thinking about writing a post about my approach to celiac and how I decide what is safe for me to eat (and why), and how that may differ from another person’s perspective. Even person to person with celiac, we may make different decisions! But more importantly, I myself may make different decisions on different days for the same food or situation. (Plus, people who are gluten free for non-celiac reasons may have their own, differing decision making process about gluten.) There was also recently a really interesting scientific study published that I think can help illustrate why decisions vary at different points in time for the same person, so I wanted to talk about the high level approach and then what this study shows us about why this type of approach is helpful for people with celiac. I have had celiac for 18+ years, so I have a lot of experience evaluating food options, food labels, and deciding what to do. I rarely get glutened – maybe once a year, if that – and this is even with eating out and getting takeout from a lot of restaurants. I am also very symptomatic (even tiny amounts of gluten are noticeable to me), thus I have some confidence in categorizing myself as someone who does not get glutened often.  Disclaimer is probably needed though: I’m not a medical professional and I’m not telling you what to do. Instead, I’m trying to show you how I think and evaluate things:

  1. Eating certified gluten-free is best, but not always possible

It’s helpful to realize that there are certifications for gluten free. In the US (where I live), there are a couple of different labels to understand the difference for. A food labeled “gluten free” means it has been tested to the FDA standards of <20ppm. However, that doesn’t mean it’s certified. There are several GF certifications beyond this standard, most of which are to the standard of <10ppm, and usually brands that bother to get certified also have good processes for vetting ingredients (inputs) as well as batches (outputs) of products. Different certifications have different requirements for these things so they slightly vary, but usually it means a higher standard – meaning a lower amount of gluten tolerance – than a standard word of “GF” on the label.

That being said, it’s a lot better than NO indication of gluten free on a label!

My rough hierarchy is:

  1. Certified gluten free (usually <10ppm)
  2. Gluten free (FDA standards, so <20ppm)
  3. No indication of ‘gluten free’, but no gluten-containing ingredients and no cross contamination warning such as “made on shared equipment”. This means it could be <20ppm or could be above, we don’t know.
  4. No indication of ‘gluten free’ and a yellow flag – some cross contamination risk such as “made on shared equipment”; or a red flag “may contain wheat”. Again, we don’t know if it’s <20ppm or above.
  5. Red flag, will not eat for any reason – contains wheat or a gluten-containing ingredient (such as malt or malt flavoring, rye, barley, etc.)

There are a lot of foods that I eat that fall into that third category though – say, picking up a banana from the produce section at the grocery store. It isn’t labeled as gluten free – is it safe to eat? I say yes and choose to eat it, even though it’s not labeled, because it doesn’t make sense to have a gluten free label on a banana when it’s a self-contained item and not processed with other foods that are likely to contain gluten.

Same for more processed items, such as other fruits and vegetables, or a container of pre-washed and pre-cut fruits or vegetables, or even a bag of frozen vegetables. As long as it doesn’t have a “may contain wheat” warning on it, I am more likely to be ok consuming it if it doesn’t have gluten-containing ingredients.

But there are other foods that ARE an issue in this category, which I have learned from experience of reading a lot of food labels. Trail mix, processed fruit (like yogurt-covered and other dried fruit products), etc because they are often mixed on shared production lines with trail mix items that do contain wheat. For these, I am more likely to be cautious and avoid items that use shared equipment because it feels like the risk of cross contamination across product lines or batches is higher. (It’s a bummer, because it rules out a lot of dried fruit, trail mixes and snack mixes, nuts, etc. that otherwise should be gluten free, but for me the uncertainty is too high). Oat related products, which I’ll talk about more below, also fall into this category.

Generally, though, some brands or sellers of products aren’t incentivized to test and label their products GF, even if they ARE gf (bananas and other single-item fruits and veggies are a great example). But, given they themselves have no gluten ingredients and are minimally processed, they’re usually a reasonable choice (e.g. a banana). GF testing costs a lot of money, which is why brands may not do it, and why we as people with celiac have to decide how to deal with the fact that there are a lot of foods in this category that may be safe to eat. Ruling them out because they don’t meet the costly most stringent standards would drastically limit our options and mess with quality of life. If you’re newly diagnosed and trying to recover from months or years of immune system damage, it may make sense to be more strict at first, and then expand back out (or not). But know that some of us with celiac ARE choosing to eat foods that are not definitely labeled gluten free (such as a banana), and that does not necessarily mean we are getting glutened.

2. The amount of food matters

Because I am someone who gets symptoms from tiny amounts of gluten and know how much gluten hurts me, I have a clear red line: I don’t eat gluten. I will not knowingly eat “may contain wheat” products: for me, it’s not worth it, even if the risk of a single bite is low.

One example is a few months ago, when I was online grocery shopping and found a new product, a chocolate-covered frozen strawberry that was new to me. It didn’t list gluten ingredients on the label, but they didn’t have any cross contamination warnings in the product listing, on the picture of the item online, nor anything on the manufacturer’s website. So I bought it. When it arrived, I went to try some, and glanced at the back of the bag and saw a ‘may contain wheat’ warning. ARGH. I was so mad: I had actually cross-checked the manufacturer’s website before I bought it, in case the listing was wrong! I was mad enough to email the brand and tell them they should be listing this on their product site, plus the grocery store listings (even though they don’t always have control over that). But they DO control their site and they should fix that. Super annoying. Anyway, the point is, I didn’t eat these and gave them to my husband, Scott, because they weren’t worth a possible glutening. I could’ve tried one just to taste it, but it wasn’t worth that possible risk. Sloppy labeling and communication about labeling like that makes me not trust a brand.

But, as above, there are times when there are products with NO label / cross contamination warning…and I do try it. However, I recognize the risk could be higher in this product versus the example above (chocolate covered strawberries that may contain wheat) – and there’s no way to tell. The difference, though, often also has to do with whether the risk is known/not and the quantity. If I decided to try the chocolate covered strawberries, I’d likely mentally categorize them as safe and something I would keep eating, so I would consume more quantity of them, driving up the risk. Whereas if I “noped” them and put them in Scott’s gluten section of the freezer, I wouldn’t be at risk of mindlessly eating them at a later time in larger quantities, increasing the risk. For foods that are not labeled and don’t have a cross contamination warning, I usually am cautious about the quantity, because as the quantity consumed increases, the risk of consuming gluten also goes up.

And this is where that new scientific study comes in. They did a gluten challenge test via pills with celiac volunteers in Australia (shout out to these brave folks who participated in the study), and recorded symptoms *and* did a test for a proxy of immune activity to test response to multiple levels of gluten, from <1mg to 2mg, 3mg, and much higher doses. (It was randomized, blinded, and they also used a placebo for control!) And what they found was that doses <=2mg didn’t trigger an immune response…but 3mg did (in a sizable minority of participants). (Not necessarily symptoms though, even in those with an immune response). Note a HUGE caveat of this study is that immune response does not mean proven damage, but it does give us a threshold to understand at what point the body might start reacting and how to think about cumulative exposure over the course of day…for which we previously didn’t have the data to have a mental framework.

Thinking about 3mg is super duper helpful because we can now use that in context of the thresholds we are most familiar with: <10ppm (certified GF usually) and <20ppm (FDA standard for GF). If you eat 30g (a small snack) of a food that is <10ppm (parts per million, so < 10/1,000,000th of it is gluten), you get a possible 0.3mg gluten dose – which you wouldn’t expect an immune reaction to. Same for doubling that, a larger snack – that would be 0.6mg. But if you 10x that (think meal-size amount), that puts you at 3mg. Whoa. That’s the level of an immune response (possibly), if gluten was present at that top end (10ppm) for that product. Now, does that mean symptoms and damage long-term? Maybe not – but this starts to show us how the amount of food matters IN ADDITION to the labeling.

The FDA standard, <20ppm, shows this even more. A 30g food amount at the top end of the 20ppm standard would be a 0.6mg dose; a larger 60g snack would be 1.2mg…whereas a 10x meal size amount (eg 300g) would be 6mg, which is definitely in the category where the immune system is more likely to respond (according to that study).

Now imagine a food in my third category, unknown ppm. That means it could be even below certified standard (eg <10) or FDA standard (<20ppm), but it could also be more – we just don’t know. But in any case, use the same logic: 30g of 40ppm (double the FDA standard, for easy math) would mean 1.2mg. Maybe fine. But as the amount of food increases, you’ll see that possible gluten amount increase: 60g of food at 40ppm would be 2.4mg, and well before you get to a meal size (300g), you would go well beyond the point of gluten exposure (>=3mg) where more people experienced an immune response and – as the amount got bigger – also increasingly saw symptoms.

This is how I think about the label/not uncertainty and the amount of uncertainty, now: in context of the quantity I might want to eat. I had previously intuited “this is more risky” when the label was uncertain and the food quantity was bigger, but this helps me put a numerical framework on the risk. 

Some loose categories to think about now with this framework:

  • For naturally GF / simple or few-ingredient foods, like fruit, vegetables, plain rice, potatoes, beans, plain dairy, or rice pasta, “no gluten ingredients” may be enough for many routine decisions, especially if the product is simple and not from a high-risk category and does not have any cross-contamination label warnings.
  • For complex processed foods, “no gluten ingredients” is weaker. A 30 g snack may still be a reasonable pragmatic choice for some people, but a 300 g meal is a different decision.
  • For oat-containing foods, “no gluten ingredients” without GF labeling or process information is a much weaker signal. Oats deserve their own caution category because of cross-contact risk in the supply chain.

3. Oats are evil* 

* Evil in the sense that they require their own mental category of gymnastics and special handling, above and beyond what we have discussed. Some people with celiac perceive that they are sensitive to oats themselves, but not everyone is – and I am not. I do eat oats, see below. But, oats are OFTEN cross-contaminated at harvesting, processing, etc because of the nature of being grown in fields near gluten-containing grains, and thus anything with oats is a hot mental mess of risk. (They’re not really evil, they just require a lot of thought, see below). 

Oats are themselves gluten-free, but they have higher cross-contact risk from growing, transport, processing, and manufacturing. Whole or rolled oats prominent in the ingredient list should bump risk assessment up; a controlled gluten-free oat process with certification, purity protocol, dedicated facility, and batch testing should bump risk assessment down.

But sadly, some of this is really hard to figure out. It used to be that there were “purity protocol” oats, where oats were grown in fields far away from gluten, harvested separately, processed separately, transported separately, etc. And with more testing on arrival, etc. But this was very expensive, and it’s rare now. And…that process was still not flawless; sometimes cross contamination of oats still happened. (The site “Gluten Free Watchdog”, for example, which does lab testing on consumer GF products used to recommend certain brands of purity protocol oats, and as of 2026, no longer does so.)

So what is a person with celiac supposed to do? Avoid all oats?

You could, but you don’t have to. You could avoid oat-related products for any of the following reasons:

  1. Oats bother you for other reasons
  2. You are too tired to go check the brand and their product testing protocols for a particular product
  3. There’s no indication of testing for GF or special handling consideration even though it uses oats

You could also decide to consume oat-containing products for any of the following reasons:

  1. The product is certified gluten free, which means there are requirements around testing the ingredients and the batched products, which reduces the risk
  2. The product is one where oat is used for oat flour (meaning anything is ground up and distributed across the flour and then across products, so the risk of one bar/cookie/etc itself is lower than a whole oat product), lowering the risk of a particular bite having >3g of gluten on its own
  3. The product is not certified gluten free but the brand has publicly shared their process for testing batches of products and preferably how they test the oats themselves before using them inside products.
  4. YOLO and you want to eat whatever the product is anyway, regardless of the above

What do I do? It depends.

Sometimes, depending on the situation, I fall into scenario A (avoid) based on reason number 2: I am too darn tired to go research the provenance and figure out if 3 applies. It’s safer to avoid as a rule, and eat something else (or not eat, and eat later something safe).

Other times I will do the research and if it falls into reasons 1-3 of scenario B, I will choose to consume it.

Here are some practical examples, which ended up glutening me, and what I changed as a result, and some maybe surprising categories of things that I *do* eat as a person with celiac:

A. Remember Nature Valley Oat & Honey bars? I looooved those as a kid. So when KIND came out with oat&honey bars that were marked gluten free, I was excited. I avoided them for a while, but I heard other people with celiac were eating them, and I decided to try them. I did ok, but I did eat one once (when I didn’t have a lot of food options while traveling), and BOOM I was glutened. It was definitively that which glutened me and it was brutal. Those went back on the NOPE list for me, along with all other KIND products containing oats. Yes, they are marked ‘gluten free’ which means that they batch tested at FDA standard (<20ppm), but cross contamination can still happen, and it was such an extreme level that I permanently decided this was not a risk worth taking for me. (The exception might be if I was stranded on a desert island and that was the only food item; but even when very very hungry on a travel day I will choose staying hungry over trying one of those again, or anything else that is a similar whole-oat type product rather than something where the oat has been processed and spread as a flour. The latter reduces the risk more than whole-oat products)

B. Speaking of Nature Valley brand, recently I noticed a product listing for new chewy protein bars that were supposedly gluten free. I assumed the listing was wrong, because in my brain ‘nature valley’ is strongly associated with gluten. But, I double checked, and it’s actually certified gluten free. More importantly, I looked at the ingredients – these are specifically the chewy nut protein bars, and there are no oats, they are nut (and soy protein) and chocolate based). Ok. So I can apply my rubric – not the oat one – and because they’re certified gluten free, try them. I did (and actually like them), so these have entered my ‘snack bar’ rotation as a reasonable option. I wouldn’t eat a lot of them in one day – because the risk grows with quantity, but because they are certified gluten free, that is good enough for me at single-serving quantity. And so far, I have not gotten glutened from these.

C. But what about other oat-containing products? Because of my past experiences, I am VERY skeptical. A cousin-in-law shared a new product she thought I might like that she had gotten for her toddler, because it was marked GF. It was an oat-based PBJ-stuffed oat bar. I scoffed and dismissed it, because in the past I had checked out this brand and they didn’t say anything about GF processes and testing, so I let my oat rubric (NOPE) override the choice. However, when I had more energy (and was bored), I went and looked them up online. Nowadays, this brand DOES list their processes very clearly. They say they are GFCO-certified gluten-free, its oats are certified gluten-free, its bakery is a gluten-free facility, and it does daily testing on every batch of oat products. Ok, now we are talking! (They also talk about purity protocol oats, which as I said, is a great detail but does not make it infallible). But because they used gf-tested oats before they even start cooking AND do daily testing of batches, that means there is a greater chance of catching issues. This is important because one bar is a 60g serving, which is double a serving of my previous example…but it’s the certified (<10ppm) standard, so that means 60g of snack, even if it was 10ppm, means a likely 0.6mg of gluten exposure risk. That’s still well below the ~3mg immune response threshold, so that makes me more comfortable with the risk of this product. Plus, like I said, the in/out testing. Would I eat 5 of these in a day (300g of it)? No, the risk definitely goes up with more. But, I not only eat these, I eat these on a periodic basis (a few times a week), because of the testing and certification. Even though they are oat-based.

(What is this product/brand? Bobo’s PB&J rounds. I haven’t tried many other Bobo’s products but the above detail is supposed to apply to their other products, too – check their website and on-product labeling for the latest details in case this has changed.)

D. Another example might be Honey Nut Cheerios or Lucky Charms, which are now all GF by default. But they’re made with oat flour. General Mills has pretty good testing processes for batches, but they also had some kerfluffles when these products were first marketed as GF with feedback from the community that it was causing issues. Now that I have the above scientific study to help frame QUANTITY with risk, it makes me wonder if it was the quantity that was causing the issues, because cereal is hard to do a single-serving of, and as I’ve shown in the data above, as you eat more of something the risk goes up, EVEN IF IT IS CERTIFIED GF. A large bowl (or two) of cereal would be more likely to get increasing exposure, even if the per-serving amount was under the FDA standard or certification threshold of acceptable ppm. I personally also have a hard time limiting my quantities of cereal, so based on this I don’t eat oat-based cereal like this…but recently I decided I could get single-serving cups of Lucky Charms occasionally, because it’s a fixed quantity (30g); labeled as GF; and it’s an oat flour product rather than whole-oats. Plus General Mills has made it clear they test after sifting their oats; after the oats become flour; ship oat flour separately; then they also do batch testing at the end. (Same for other General Mills GF oat flour products). Like Bobo’s, that’s as decent of a process that I think we can probably get. So, like Bobo’s, I am now willing to eat these products. But, again, for cereal, only as a single-snack-serving product, because of the risk quantity calculation and my own experience with resisting the temptation of a larger bowl of cereal.

E. I even eat oatmeal. Quaker Oats, like General Mills, has a process where they evaluate oats in a separate facility for gluten as well as evaluate their batches of finished products. Note that this does not mean the general Quaker Oats products: they only have a few GF products. One is a big can of quick oats (like you might use in recipes for say, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies), and another is prepared packets that you mix with water or milk to make a bowl of oatmeal. These GF versions with prepared packets come in plain or maple & brown sugar flavors, and I eat the latter periodically and have never gotten glutened from these. Like the cereal, I make this decision based on the brand’s processes and testing of input ingredients as well as batch testing the products, plus the awareness that there is still a risk but that I am further mitigating this risk by consuming single-serving quantities of it.

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All of the above is a lot of words but this chart may help, with colors to show how as you go down the levels of labeling certainty, the type of product (the three columns: simple; complex processed; oat containing) also should factor in, AND so should the quantity because the risk goes up the more you eat something.

Example chart showing the 5 row categories from certified GF to 'may contain wheat', plus columns for simple food that is naturally gf to more complex processed food, to an oat column broken into two categories for oats with good testing processes and those without that info. As you go up in row category, or to the right toward complex food or oat-containing foods, the amount of food consumed increasing also drives up risk. The chart shows ok-ish decisions versus those that start to transition to caution or to outright avoidance categories.

It’s absolutely ok to make different decisions at different points in time, based on the situation. If you are struggling with recovering after diagnosis, you may want or need to be more careful and limited in what you eat. If you have been getting glutened and can’t figure out where, this may help you think through types of food or quantities where the risk may be in the quantity. (P.S. – people with celiac can also have exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (known as EPI or PEI), so be aware if you have eliminated all sources of gluten and still have GI symptoms, you may want to take the EPI/PEI-SS and ask your gastroenterologist and discuss elastase testing to rule out EPI).

And sometimes you’re just too tired to think through the risk and just stick with the safest possible option – meaning only choosing the things labeled definitively GF. That’s fine, too. You can also choose differently when you have more energy to do research and find out if you should rule something permanently out or rule it back in if the brand has changed their labeling / processes /etc.

Personally, if I’m put on the spot (meaning someone offers me food or shows me a label and asks me if I want any), if there is any uncertainty I’m prone to saying no thanks, it’s not worth it (right then). Sometimes I’ll go back later when I’m not on the spot and look it up and look for more information about testing/etc from the brand. That’s how I ended up adding the PB&J rounds into my snack rotation, after first excluding them because they failed my oat rubric test based on the on-product label.

Another big caveat is to remember to check products often, even if it’s something you eat often. Brands could add more testing and validation to their products; they can also change their products and add new cross contamination warnings to their products that weren’t there before. Anything that is processed is definitely worth reading the label for: I have found that cheap store-brand bags of frozen vegetables usually have “may contain wheat” warnings on them (argh!) on the product itself, even though the online pictures of it and the label don’t show them online. So keep in mind online listing and online pictures and actual on-product labels can vary. (Name brand frozen veggies tend to not have this warning on them, so in that scenario I would pay more (sigh) for the name brand without the warning).

What do I eat as a person with celiac? And how do I decide what is safe to eat? A blog post by Dana M. Lewis on DIYPS.orgAnd again, I want to emphasize that you can make difference decisions for different situations. How I decide – and my rubric above – may not match how you handle things. Everyone is different. If you’ve been glutened lately and want to be more strict/careful in your decision-making, you can. If you are traveling and don’t want to risk feeling bad, you can be more stringent in your criteria for what you do/don’t risk. These are just a few examples of where I make varying decisions at any point in time.

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Disclaimer is probably worth repeating: I’m not a medical professional, I’m just a person with celiac for 18+ years, I am not telling you what to do, but this reflects how I handle uncertainty and decision making and how/why it changes over time, especially as someone who eats a lot of packaged and prepared foods.

How to Pick Food (Fuel) For Ultramarathon Running

by Dana Lewis

I’ve previously written about ultrarunning preparation and a little bit about how I approach fueling. But it occurred to me there might be others out there wondering exactly HOW to find fuel that works for them, because it’s an iterative process.

The way I approach fueling is based on a couple of variables.

First and foremost, everything has to be gluten free (because I have celiac). So that limits a lot of the common ultrarunning fuel options. Things like bars (some are GF, most are not), Uncrustables, PopTarts, and many other common recommendations in the ultra community just aren’t an option for me. Some, I can find or make alternatives to, but it’s worth noting that being gluten free for celiac (where cross-contamination is also an issue, not just the ingredients) or having a food allergy and being an ultrarunner can make things more challenging.

Then, I also have exocrine pancreatic insufficiency. This doesn’t limit what I eat, but it factors in to how I approach ideal fueling options, because I have to match the enzyme amounts to the amount of food I’m eating. So naturally, the pill size options I have of OTC enzymes (one is lipase only and covers ~6g of fat for me, the other is a multi-enzyme option that includes protease to cover protein, and only enough lipase to cover ~4g of fat for me; I also have one much larger that covers ~15g of fat but I don’t typically use this one while running) influence the portion sizes of what I choose.

That being said, I probably – despite EPI – still tend toward higher fat options than most people. This is in part because I have had type 1 diabetes for 20+ years. While I by no means consume a low c-a-r-b diet, I typically consume less than the people with insulin-producing pancreases in my life, and lean slightly toward higher fat options because a) my taste buds like them and b) they’ve historically had less impact on my glucose levels. Reason A is probably the main reason now, thanks to automated insulin delivery, but regardless of reason, 20+ years of a higher level than most people’s fat consumption means I’m also probably better fat-adapted for exercise than most people.

Plus, ultrarunning tends to be slower than shorter runs (like marathons and shorter for most people), so that’s also more amenable to fat and other nutrient digestion. So, ultrarunners in general tend to have more options in terms of not just needing “gu” and “gel” and “blocks” and calorie-sugar drinks as fuel options (although if that is what you prefer and works well for you, great!).

All of these reasons lead me toward generally preferring fuel portions that are:

  1. Gluten free with no cross-contamination risk
  2. ~20g of carbs
  3. ~10g of fat or less
  4. ~5-10g of protein or less

Overall, I shoot for consuming ~250 calories per hour. Some people like to measure hourly fuel consumption by calories. Others prefer carb consumption. But given that I have a higher tolerance for fat and protein consumption – thanks to the enzymes I need for EPI plus decades of practice – calories as a metric for hourly consumption makes sense for me. If I went for the level of carb intake many recommend for ultrarunners, I’d find it harder to consistently manage glucose levels while running for a zillion hours. I by no means think any of my above numbers are necessarily what’s best for anyone else, but that’s what I use based on my experiences to date as a rough outline of what to shoot for.

After I’ve thought through my requirements: gluten free, 250 calories per hour, and preferably no single serving portion size that is greater than 20ish grams of carbs or 10g of fat or 5-10g or protein, I can move on to making a list of foods I like and that I think would “work” for ultrarunning.

“Work” by my definition is not too messy to carry or eat (won’t melt easily, won’t require holding in my hands to eat and get them messy).

My initial list has included (everything here gluten free):

  • Oreos or similar sandwich type cookies
  • Yogurt/chocolate covered pretzels
  • PB or other filled pretzel nuggets
  • Chili cheese Fritos
  • Beef sticks
  • PB M&M’s
  • Reese’s Pieces
  • Snickers
  • Mini PayDays
  • Macaroons
  • Muffins
  • Fruit snacks
  • Fruit/date bars
  • GF (only specific flavors are GF which is why I’m noting this) of Honey Stinger Stroopwaffles

I wish I could include more chip/savory options on my lists, and that’s something I’ve been working on. Fritos are easy enough to eat from a snack size baggie without having to touch them with my hands or pull individual chips out to eat; I can just pour portions into my mouth. Most other chips, though, are too big and too ‘sharp’ feeling for my mouth to eat this way, so chili cheese Fritos are my primary savory option, other than beef sticks (that are surprisingly moist and easy to swallow on the run!).

Some of the foods I’ve tried from the above list and have eventually taken OFF my list include:

  • PB pretzel nuggets, because they get stale in baggies pretty fast and then they feel dry and obnoxious to chew and swallow.
  • Muffins – I tried both banana muffin halves and chocolate chip muffin halves. While they’re moist and delicious straight out of the oven, I found they are challenging to swallow while running (probably because they’re more dry).
  • Gluten free Oreos – actual Oreo brand GF Oreos, which I got burnt out on about the time I realized I had EPI, but also they too have a pretty dry mouthfeel. I’ve tried other brand chocolate sandwich cookies and also for some reason find them challenging to swallow. I did try a vanilla sandwich cookie (Glutino brand) recently and that is working better – the cookie is harder but doesn’t taste as dry – so that’s tentatively on my list as a replacement.

Other than “do I like this food” and “does it work for carrying on runs”, I then move on to “optimizing” my intake in terms of macronutrients.  Ideally, each portion size and item has SOME fat, protein, and carbs, but not TOO MUCH fat, protein and carbs.

Most of my snacks are some fat, a little more carb, and a tiny bit of protein. The outlier is my beef sticks, which are the highest protein option out of my shelf-stable running fuel options (7g of fat, 8g of protein). Most of the others are typically 1-3g of protein, 5-10g of fat (perfect, because that is 1-2 enzyme OTC pills), and 10-20g of carb (ideal, because it’s a manageable amount for glucose levels at any one time).

Sometimes, I add things to my list based on the above criteria (gluten free with no cross-contamination list; I like to eat it; not messy to carry) and work out a possible serving size. For example, the other day I was brainstorming more fuel options and it occurred to me that I like brownies and a piece of brownie in a baggie would probably be moist and nice tasting and would be fine in a baggie. I planned to make a batch of brownies and calculated how I would cut them to get consistent portion sizes (so I would know the macronutrients for enzymes).

However, once I made my brownies, and started to cut them, I immediately went “nope” and scratched them off my list for using on runs. Mainly because, I hate cutting them and they crumbled. The idea of having to perfect how to cook them to be able to cut them without them crumbling just seems like too much work. So I scratched them off my list, and am just enjoying eating the brownies as brownies at home, not during runs!

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I first started taking these snacks on runs and testing each one, making sure that they tasted good and also worked well for me (digestion-wise) during exercise, not just when I was sitting around. All of them, other than the ones listed above for ‘dry’ reasons or things like brownies (crossed off because of the hassle to prepare), have stayed on the list.

I also started looking at the total amount of calories I was consuming during training runs, to see how close I was to my goal of ~250 calories per hour. It’s not an exact number and a hard and fast “must have”, but given that I’m a slower runner (who run/walks, so I have lower calorie burn than most ultrarunners), I typically burn in the ballpark of ~300-400 calories per hour. I generally assume ~350 calories for a reasonable average. (Note, again, this is much lower than most people’s burn, but it’s roughly my burn rate and I’m trying to show the process itself of how I make decisions about fuel).

Aiming for ~250 calories per hour means that I only have a deficit of 100 calories per hour. Over the course of a ~100 mile race that might take 30 hours, this means I’ll “only” have an estimated deficit of 3,000 calories. Which is a lot less than most people’s estimated deficit, both because I have a lower burn rate (I’m slower) and because, as described above and below, I am trying to be very strategic about fueling for a number of reasons, including not ending up under fueling for energy purposes. For shorter runs, like a 6 hour run, that means I only end up ~600 calories in deficit – which is relatively easy to make up with consumption before and after the run, to make sure that I’m staying on top of my energy needs.

It turns out, some of my preferred snacks are a lot lower and higher calories than each other! And this can add up.

For example, fruit snacks – super easy to chew (or swallow without much chewing). 20g of carb, 0g of fat or protein, and only 80 calories. Another easy to quickly chew and swallow option: a mini date (fruit) bar. 13g carb, 5g fat, 2 protein. And…90 calories. My beef stick? 7g of fat, 8g of protein, and only 100 calories!

My approach that works for me has been to eat every 30 minutes, which means twice per hour. Those are three of my favorite (because they’re easy to consume) fuel options. If I eat two of those in the same hour, say fruit snacks and the date bar, that’s only 170 calories. Well below the goal of 250 for the hour! Combining either with my beef stick (so 180 or 190 calories, depending), is still well below goal.

This is why I have my macronutrient fuel library with carbs, fat, protein, *and* calories (and sodium, more on that below) filled out, so I can keep an eye on patterns of what I tend to prefer by default – which is often more of these smaller, fewer calorie options as I get tired at the end of the runs, when it’s even more important to make sure I’m at (or near) my calorie goals.

Tracking this for each training run has been really helpful, so I can see my default tendency to choose “smaller” and “easier to swallow” – but that also means likely fewer calories – options. This is also teaching me that I need to pair larger calorie options with them or follow on with a larger calorie option. For example, I have certain items on my list like Snickers. I get the “share size” bars that are actually 2 individual bars, and open them up and put one in each baggie. ½ of the share size package (aka 1 bar) is 220 calories! That’s a lot (relative to other options), so if I eat a <100 calorie option like fruit snacks or a date bar, I try to make it in the same hour as the above average option, like the ½ snickers. 220+80 is 300 calories, which means it’s above goal for the hour.

And that works well for me. Sometimes I do have hours where I am slightly below goal – say 240 calories. That’s fine! It’s not precise. But 250 calories per hour as a goal seems to work well as a general baseline, and I know that if I have several hours of at or greater than 250 calories, one smaller hour (200-250) is not a big deal. But this tracking and reviewing my data during the run via my tracking spreadsheet helps make sure I don’t get on a slippery slope to not consuming enough fuel to match the demands I’m putting on my body.

And the same goes for sodium. I have read a lot of literature on sodium consumption and/or supplementation in ultrarunning. Most of the science suggests it may not matter in terms of sodium concentration in the blood and/or muscle cramps, which is why a lot of people choose sodium supplementation. But for me, I have a very clear, distinct feeling when I get not enough sodium. It is almost like a chemical feeling in my chest, and is a cousin (but distinct) feeling to feeling ketones. I’ve had it happen before on long hikes where I drank tons to stay hydrated and kept my glucose levels in range but didn’t eat snacks with sodium nor supplement my water. I’ve also had it happen on runs. So for me, I do typically need sodium supplementation because that chemical-like feeling builds up and starts to make me feel like I’m wheezing in my chest (although my lungs are fine and have no issues during this). And what I found works for me is targeting around 500mg/hour of sodium consumption, through a combination of electrolyte pills and food.

(Side note, most ultrarunning blogs I’ve read suggest you’ll be just fine based on food you graze at the aid station. Well, I do most of my ultras as solo endeavors – no grazing, everything is pre-planned – and even if I did do an organized race, because of celiac I can’t eat 95% of the food (due to ingredients, lack of labeling, and/or cross contamination)…so that just doesn’t work for me to rely on aid station food to supplement me sodium-wise. But maybe it would work for other people, it just doesn’t for me given the celiac situation.)

I used to just target 500mg/hour of sodium through electrolyte pills. However, as I switched to actually fueling my runs and tracking carbs, fat, protein, and calories (as described above), I realized it’d be just as easy to track sodium intake in the food, and maybe that would enable me to have a different strategy on electrolyte pill consumption – and it did!

I went back to my spreadsheet and re-added information for sodium to all of my food items in my fuel library, and added it to the template that I duplicate for every run. Some of my food items, just like they can be outliers on calories or protein or fat or carbs, are also outliers on sodium. Biggest example? My beef stick, the protein outlier, is also a sodium outlier: 370mg of sodium! Yay! Same for my chili cheese Fritos – 210mg of sodium – which is actually the same amount of sodium that’s in the type of electrolyte pills I’m currently using.

I originally had a timer set and every 45 minutes, I’d take an electrolyte pill. However, in the last year I gradually realized that sometimes that made me over by quite a bit on certain hours and in some cases, I ended up WAY under my 500mg sodium goal. I actually noticed this in the latter portion of my 82 mile run – I started to feel the low-sodium chest feeling that I get, glanced at my sheet (that I hadn’t been paying close attention to because of So. Much. Rain) and realized – oops – that I had an hour of 323mg of sodium followed by a 495mg hour. I took another electrolyte pill to catch up and chose some higher sodium snacks for my next few fuels. There were a couple hours earlier in the run (hours 4 and 7) where I had happened to – based on some of my fresh fuel options like mashed potatoes – to end up with over 1000mg of sodium. I probably didn’t need that much, and so in subsequent hours I learned I could skip the electrolyte pill when I had had mashed potatoes in the last hour. Eventually, after my 82-mile run when I started training long runs again, I realized that keeping an eye on my rolling sodium tallies and tracking it like I tracked calories, taking an electrolyte pill when my hourly average dropped <500mg and not based on a pre-set time when it was >500mg, began to work well for me.

And that’s what I’ve been experimenting with for my last half dozen runs, which has worked – all of those runs have ended up with a total average slightly above 500mg of sodium and slightly above 250 calories for all hours of the run!

An example chart that automatically updates (as a pivot table) summarizing each hour's intake of sodium and calories during a run. At the bottom, an average is calculated, showing this 6 hour run example achieved 569 mg/hr of sodium and 262 calories per hour, reaching both goals.

Now, you may be wondering – she tracks calories and sodium, what about fat and protein and carbs?

I don’t actually care about or use these in real-time for an hourly average; I use these solely as real-time decision in points as 1) for carbs, to know how much insulin I might need dependent on my glucose levels at the time (because I have Type 1 diabetes); and 2) the fat and protein is to make sure I take the right amount of enzymes so I can actually digest the fuel (because I have exocrine pancreatic insufficiency and can’t digest fuel without enzyme pills). I do occasionally look back at these numbers cumulatively, but for the most part, they’re solely there for real-time decision making at the moment I decide what to eat. Which is 95% of the time based on my taste buds after I’ve decided whether I need to factor in a higher calorie or sodium option!

For me, my higher sodium options are chili cheese Fritos, beef stick, yogurt covered pretzels.

For me, my higher calorie options are the ½ share size Snickers; chili cheese Fritos; Reese’s pieces; yogurt covered pretzels; GF honey stinger stroopwaffle; and 2 mini PayDay bars.

Those are all shelf-stable options that I keep in snack size baggies and ready to throw into my running vest.

Most of my ‘fresh’ food options, that I’d have my husband bring out to the ‘aid station’/turnaround point of my runs for refueling, tend to be higher calorie options. This includes ¼ of a GF PB&J sandwich (which I keep frozen so it lasts longer in my vest without getting squishy); ¼ of a GF ham and cheese quesadilla; a mashed potato cup prepared in the microwave and stuck in another baggie (a jillion, I mean, 690mg of sodium if you consume the whole thing but it’s occasionally hard to eat allll those mashed potatoes out of a baggie in one go when you’re not actually very hungry); sweet potato tots; etc.

So again, my recommendation is to find foods you like in general and then figure out your guiding principles. For example:

  • Do you have any dietary restrictions, food allergies or intolerances, or have already learned foods that your body Does Not Like while running?
  • Are you aiming to do carbs/hr, calories/hr, or something else? What amounts are those?
  • Do you need to track your fuel consumption to help you figure out how you’re not hitting your fuel goals? If so, how? Is it by wrappers? Do you want to start with a list of fuel and cross it off or tear it off as you go? Or like me, use a note on your phone or a drop down list in your spreadsheet to log it (my blog post here has a template if you’d like to use it)?

My guiding principles are:

  • Gluten free with no cross contamination risk (because celiac)
  • ~250 calories per hour, eating twice per hour to achieve this
  • Each fuel (every 30 min) should be less than ~20g of carb, ~10g of fat, and ~5-10g of protein
  • I also want ~500mg of sodium each hour through the 2x fuel and when needed, electrolyte pills that have 210mg of sodium each
  • Dry food is harder to swallow; mouthfeel (ability to chew and swallow it) is something to factor in.
  • I prefer to eat my food on the go while I’m run/walking, so it should be all foods that can go in a snack or sandwich size baggie in my vest. Other options (like chicken broth, soup, and messy food items) can be on my backup list to be consumed at the aid station but unless I have a craving for them, they are secondary options.
  • Not a hassle to make/prepare/measure out into individual serving sizes.

Find foods that you like, figure out your guiding principles, and keep revising your list as you find what options work well for you in different situations and based on your running needs!

Food (fuel) for ultramarathon running by Dana Lewis at DIYPS.org