EP 69: Gluten-Free Living with Ellen Bayens and The Celiac Scene

**Episode Description:**

In this episode, Ellen Bayens shares her powerful journey of living with celiac disease and how her experiences have fueled her passion for advocacy and awareness. From her family's immigrant history to her mother's undiagnosed struggles and her own accidental discovery of her diagnosis, Ellen sheds light on the challenges and importance of early detection. Join us as we delve into her story of resilience and determination to make life easier for those affected by celiac disease.

**Key Points:**

- The impact of World War II on her mother's health and diet

- Undiagnosed celiac disease: A story of struggle and perseverance

- Discovering the diagnosis: Ellen's journey to self-awareness

- Advocacy and raising awareness: Ellen's mission to help others

- The challenges of living a gluten-free lifestyle and the need for support

- Gain insights into the evolution of gluten-free dining and the role of chefs and restaurants in catering to the needs of individuals with celiac disease.

- Explore the intersection of culinary artistry and dietary restrictions, as chefs like David Wong of Six Mile Pub redefine the boundaries of gluten-free cuisine.

- Learn about the rise of dedicated gluten-free establishments and how they contribute to the inclusivity and accessibility of dining experiences for those with gluten sensitivities.

Website: https://theceliacscene.com/
IG: @theceliacscene

Season2

Transcript

Michael Dugan: 0:52

Ellen Baynes is the founder of the Celiac Scene, the go to gluten resource for Victoria, Vancouver Island, and the Gulf Islands. Referred to as the Remarkable Celiac by the Canadian Celiac Association, Ellen speaks firsthand and with infectious humor about the challenges of the diet and how they became the gateway to good health. Ellen, such an honor. Welcome to the show.

Ellen Bayens: 1:16

Hello, Michael. I'm very excited to speak with you.

Michael Dugan: 1:18

Me too. Me too. I'm going to digress a little bit and just. Start out by explaining how we connected because it's a very special connection. I interviewed an amazing woman named Kimberly Pearson and she is a celiac chef baker. She runs the rocks and dirt bakery out of Camino Island, which is Just on the edge of Washington state, right near the border of Canada, we really connected and I really loved her story in my mind. I wanted to do something for my aunt who has celiac disease. And she's one of my heroes because she never talks about it in a negative way. She's always trying to help other people understand it. When I started the podcast over two years ago, I said to myself, I want to interview a celiac chef. I want to interview someone connected to that circle. Then when I met Kimberly, we had this amazing interview and she opened up and the story was incredible. You got wind of it and in what you do, because of your online resource for the celiac scene, you honored her and you honored me, which surprised me. She got more exposure and it was just a wonderful experience. And then I started diving into the celiac scene and looking and going, there are so many amazing resources that you offer. And it's really incredible how much you've gathered and how much you've brought into the world to help other people. That's why I invited you as a guest. So I'm a little choked up, emotional, but you know what? But that's what the show's all about.

Ellen Bayens: 2:49

Thank you. I'm so honored. And just like you have a passion for getting into the stories of chefs and understanding that from your own background, I came to the resource with my own diagnosis and a family history of celiac disease. I needed to learn how to live my life. And I want to be able to share that information with anyone who's watching. newly diagnosed has a family member who's newly diagnosed or who's just coming to my part of the world so that they don't have to go through that awkward agony of how am I going to live my life? Where can I eat? I wanted to make it easier for them because I benefited from the people who made my life easier when I was first diagnosed.

Michael Dugan: 3:30

Yeah, that's amazing. And we're going to talk about all today. I love to get the origin story. I'd love to get into the person so that Our listeners around the world can understand who you are, what drove you, what motivated you. So we're going to start out really simple. What was it like growing up and how are you connected to food? Do you have a story you can share?

Ellen Bayens: 3:50

Yes, I have a story and I've never told this one. So a tribute to you and your openness and curiosity. I'm the daughter of Dutch immigrants who came to Canada in the late fifties. My mother actually grew up in Indonesia and I know you have an Indonesian connection too. You've interviewed someone from there. So she, her father was a, the manager of a sugar cane operation in Java and she was born, actually born in Indonesia. Coincidentally, his mother was Indonesian, hence that's his connection with the sugarcane industry. And so he was half Indonesian, she was one quarter Indonesian, and I'm one eighth, but you wouldn't know it, I look typically Dutch. So she grew up in, in Southeast Asia. She lived in a diet of rice and whole foods, as is the way that things were, still are there. By the time she was eight, there was the Second World War and the Japanese invasion of Indonesia. And she lived in a prisoner of war concentration camp for four years. In Indonesia, which is the most bizarre start to a podcast. I'm sure you've ever had.

Michael Dugan: 5:02

Yeah.

Ellen Bayens: 5:03

She persisted there and her mom and her older brother has spina bifida and that becomes relevant to the story. For four years, they managed to live there. Her father actually helped to build as a prisoner of war, the Burmese railway. So he barely survived that after four years, very little food, hard labor. Lots of disease. And when the war ended, entire Dutch colony repatriated to Holland. They met up in Thailand, her mom, her dad, and her brother. Then they managed to go back to Holland. At the age of 12 or 13, she actually went back to her home country. And that's where her health problems began. Because she then was introduced to a diet high in flour, and wheat. It was at that point that despite the war, everything she'd gone through with a food deprivation, that's when her health began to decline. Unknown to her for many more years later, she had celiac disease. With the predominant ingredient in the Dutch diet being either potatoes or bread, her health declined. She would walk down the street and people would there at how thin she was. She was emaciated. No one knew much about the disease then. My dad and she met in junior high school as a result of the hard times after the war. Things were very difficult in Europe for the years afterwards. They decided to emigrate to Canada at the age of 19 with a six week old baby, came to Canada, and set up in Calgary and then Edmonton, Alberta. Her health. problems actually grew from there. She developed thyroid Hashimoto's disease, a dis, an autoimmune disorder. She did not know yet that for 30 more years, she would not know she had celiac disease. So she had thyroid disease addressed a couple of times, once through surgery, and then once through radioactive iodine, so that her thyroid was completely done. And she plotted along for many years. What anybody would notice about my mother is that she had a very distended belly. She would always look as though she was a little bit pregnant. Other than that, she was fine, she was fit, she was healthy. Only when she was in her mid 50s did she suffer really difficult digestive disease symptoms. Indigestion, a lot of frequent bowel movements. I won't go into too much detail but she went to the doctor. Her symptoms actually got worse when she dined out because at home she cooked mostly Indonesian. We grew up on nasi goreng and balmy goreng. We grew up with a whole mindset of the European way of life and the Indonesian way of life and a lot of stories about the war. I think for my parents it was a kind of PTSD for them.

Michael Dugan: 7:41

Oh yeah.

Ellen Bayens: 7:42

They had a wonderful lives. They were the, Classic immigrant story, but my father had gone through the war in Holland, my mother in Indonesia, and we were children of this, and I'm so grateful for my childhood. Wow. In the mid 50s, her health declined. We were all, as kids, moving out. When she dined out, socially, she became ill. Her GP felt that she was suffering from a form of social anxiety.

Michael Dugan: 8:05

That wasn't the case.

Ellen Bayens: 8:06

about eating out, about empty nest syndrome.

Michael Dugan: 8:09

Oh, wow.

Ellen Bayens: 8:10

And he prescribed valium to calm her. She took one pill and she knew that was not the reason. Finally, through reading through the newspaper, she read a doctor's column that described her every symptom. And she took that newspaper clipping to the doctor and said, I think this is what I have. And he shrugged his shoulders and he said, okay, let's test you for that. And at that time there wasn't a blood test for celiac disease. They did a biopsy of her small intestine. And lo and behold, she had diagnosed herself.

Michael Dugan: 8:42

Wow.

Ellen Bayens: 8:42

So that was the turning point for her. Unfortunately, for having consumed gluten for a good 40 years, not knowing that she should have avoided it, she went on to develop additional autoimmune disorders. Late onset adult diabetes, which is an autoimmune disorder suddenly did not produce insulin anymore and a form of Parkinsonism, a movement disorder, and really, it was a trajectory that no one would wish on anyone. It was a really tough to see her decline and ultimately she had oral cancer. Oh, wow. There's a whole host of diseases, conditions that we'll never know if that would have prevented. Her, if she'd gone gluten free, that is in part why I do what I do in terms of awareness. Not knowing you have the disease and then continuing to consume gluten really jeopardizes your health. In addition to that, we have only a 15 percent diagnosis rate. 85 percent of celiacs in this day and age, when there is a simple blood test to pre screen us for the disease, only 15 percent of us are ever diagnosed. There's a lot, there's a good reason, there's a passion for what I do. I saw the worst of it with my mother and like many of us in those years, we didn't realize that family members are at a genetic risk for developing the disease. I had no idea that I could potentially have the disease and it was only 30 years later that I came upon my own diagnosis, also completely by accident.

Michael Dugan: 10:17

Wow, that's amazing. And as a child, you grew up around this, but as you were growing up, what did you aspire to be? And how did you, how did this come about? Because I'm trying to get this. understanding of when I'm growing up, I want to be, this is the direction that I took. So maybe you can take us through like, when that happened, was it an adult that you made this change and said, okay, I'm going to focus on this.

Ellen Bayens: 10:46

Okay. I just want to say that. For all those years that I lived with my parents and at home, looking back, was there a clue to my celiac disease and there was one. It was the one that my mom, you could tell from her, I always had a very distended stomach or belly. I was what anyone would call barrel wasted. And when I see pic, I always thought of myself as being overweight, but. I wasn't, I was completely normal, except I had this large stomach that made me feel as though I was chubby and it skewed with my self concept and it really led to subsequent eating disorder because the only way that I could reduce my stomach was basically not to eat. Because I didn't know what was causing it. I couldn't make a connection. And for all the years I lived at home, my mother wasn't yet diagnosed. There was a problem in my health that I didn't know, but it all came to make sense. So what did I want to be as a kid? Were the children of well educated immigrants and we landed in the middle of the prairies in Alberta we felt very different. I, spoke, I arrived at five speaking Dutch. I knew we didn't fit it. We had another language. We quickly assimilated. When I went to school, I was quick, quickly bumped into the next grade because We came from a family that was, for whatever reason, I was a little bit ahead of my peers. What that did was it's, it made me younger than my schoolmates. So that always put me at a little, put me off culture a little bit. I was always younger. I went to high school at six, but got to high school at 13. It went to university at 16. So pushed far too head emotionally. Academically, I could manage, but emotionally not. With this possibility of being able to do anything I wanted to do. I had no clue what I wanted to do. And I kept falling into things. And by the grace of people who saw something in me, my industriousness, my curiosity, I was just led down a path. I. I went to university for one year. I was far too young. I was just panic stricken. Even though I lived at home and the university was just across the river valley from me, I felt completely overwhelmed. And I took a year off, worked in a medical lab, and that was very interesting to me, microbiology. And the head of the lab. We'd like to sponsor you to become a lab technician. Right at the same university that I opted out of the year before, I was attending university with the support of the biomedical lab. So over those, in a sense, I article to become a lab tech and I, they don't have this program anymore, but in a very practical way, I learned everything I needed to know and subsequently trained the lab techs I started university with. They, after those four years, they came to the very lab I was working in and I was teaching them. And it's the teaching part that's the common denominator to everything I've done since. After a few years at university, at the lab, I wanted to go into education. And I worked part time at the lab and I went to university and I got a degree in education. Then came an opportunity for me to travel through Southeast Asia for a year. And at the end of that, I came back to Canada and before I could even get a job teaching, the lab pulled me back in and said, would you like to supervise the evening shift? And the money was good. It worked with my lifestyle because I could do what I wanted by day work in the evenings. I trained at a succession as anybody knows, in any industry training staff is. The relentless number one job description is training the next person. So I did that. Then the lab asked me if I would like to train the new people who came to the lab that we became computerized. I, they asked me to go down to Phoenix, Arizona for two weeks. We learned how computerization worked. That tells you how old I am. I came back to the lab. I taught all the lab techs how to use a computer. So there's always something where I fell into things. I was curious. I needed to know myself because I'm insecure. So I want to know, I have to understand everything. And then I can tell the next person. Family life came, met a wonderful man, had two wonderful children. We moved from Edmonton to Vancouver and then to Victoria. And I was mostly a stay at home mom, very interested in fitness, had part time work in the health food industry for a few years and then came my diagnosis because I was transferred from my GP in Edmonton to Vancouver and then in Victoria I went through a complete physical and she noticed that there was something wrong with my liver. My GP did all the testing. I was very fit. I was into my form of activity was in weight training and bodybuilding. So I did that for eight years, never competed, but very dedicated to at the time, a low carb high protein diet. So not that much gluten was getting into my life. I more or less avoided bread and pasta because we thought carbs were bad in that era. Presented to her with high liver enzymes and very well, my health was excellent. And she suggested to me that I was either using steroids Or I was abusing alcohol. And I said to her, I'm a mom of two kids in elementary school. I lead a very fit life. She suggested that they put steroids in protein powders. And I said, I don't think they do that. And they'd have to charge us a lot more to do that. So for two years, we went back and forth and she looked in my eye. Sometimes it begged me to tell her what am I doing? That is causing my liver to have high enzyme and not admitting to it. After two years. She said, we've got to do a liver biopsy, we've got to know what's going on, because of course, cancer is probably the one thing that people worry about the most. And I acquiesced, I said, okay, go ahead, sign me up. So I went for the liver biopsy, had the procedure. 10 days later, I get a call from receptionist at the gastroenterologist who oversees these results. So a very unusual way to get a diagnosis like this. And she informed me that actually what had happened in the procedure is that they'd gone through the liver. The doctor had perforated into my small intestine, which is right next door to the liver and withdrew cells from the small intestine through my liver and out into the sample that the pathologist was going to review. The pathologist saw liver cells, but also saw the cells in the small intestine that Prove or show that a person has celiac disease.

Michael Dugan: 17:13

Oh, wow.

Ellen Bayens: 17:13

So I was diagnosed completely by accident by a procedure that went slightly wrong through the tenacity of my practitioner. And I was diagnosed with celiac disease when I went to her office to get the more background on the results. After the receptionist told me that I had the disease, I went back to the GP's office and I said to her, I have celiac disease. My mom has that. And she practically threw her. hands in the air to say, why didn't you ever tell me that you have a history of a digestive disorder? And I said, because I didn't know I was at risk to develop it.

Michael Dugan: 17:46

Oh, okay.

Ellen Bayens: 17:47

That was 20 years ago. We didn't understand that there's a genetic component. It wasn't commonly understood. We didn't know then that the liver could be affected. by celiac disease. We now know that every organ can be affected by this autoimmune disorder. So in one fell swoop, I understood my disease. I knew how to live a gluten free life because, of course, I'd learned from my mom. I fed her. She served us gluten free food. I turned the page. I went to my grocery store, got the gluten free bread that I needed, started a basic diet. And from that day, My adjustment to the diagnosis was very easy, very straightforward. And that day I also called the Canadian Celiac Association because I needed to be with my people. And that's what started the next phase of my life.

Michael Dugan: 18:36

Yeah. Let's talk about that part. So what happened next? Let's just go there.

Ellen Bayens: 18:41

Okay. This is the recurring theme in everything I share with anyone with celiac diseases. Get with your people, find someone else, lean on them, learn what they've learned so that you can be educated and emotionally supported. So in the Canadian Celiac Association, it's called Celiac Canada now, they've done a rebrand. They had peer counselors or volunteers and I called the office, the volunteer run office. I got a call back and that gentleman, Mike Rose, spent an hour with me and I don't know what we talked about, but he told me everything I needed to know about being gluten free in Victoria. And he invited me to come to a meeting of celiacs, which I'm all for that. I'm a joiner as you probably hear in a number of ways and I went to that meeting, but little did I know it was an executive meeting it wasn't a support meeting.

Michael Dugan: 19:33

So like a board meeting

Ellen Bayens: 19:34

A Board meeting. And all of a sudden I said, I guess I can make tea and coffee at our actual support meetings. And so I was. Pulled into the volunteer side of Celiac Canada and that, went on to change my life, not just the disease, but the whole way that I applied myself in work and it's really was the beginning of the Celiac scene. So do you see how I just seem to fall into these things and if you're a believer or if you believe in it, in some spiritual guidance. Things have happened in my life that have put me in the right place.

Michael Dugan: 20:11

I can see how things aligned. And now I'm excited to talk about what you're doing now, the celiac scene. Wow, I didn't realize how deep it goes. There are so many amazing resources online in the celiac scene.

Ellen Bayens: 20:27

Thank you.

Michael Dugan: 20:28

I want everyone to understand how you created this. It may help them, not just if they have celiac, but make healthy choices and also to connect to chefs that are connected around this circle of celiac and healthy cooking. Very much so can you tell us a little bit more and let's shape celiac scene and how did this evolve? Because that's where I feel that this is happening right now.

Ellen Bayens: 20:50

As a celiac, you learn that chefs are very important to you, as are. Retailers, we need each other in order to live a good, healthy life. It became very apparent to me, we needed to support the retailers and let them know what kind of food we wanted them to bring in. We needed chefs to understand how carefully to prepare our meals. I can't say enough about how we support each other. Need to support each other, educate each other and be compassionate for each other. Soon enough, I became the vice president of the Victoria Chapter of the Celiac Association. Very active, helped to stage a conference. Had over 600 people come to Victoria from across Canada to listen to the best experts at that time in 2008. I connected with all this. The vendors, the sponsors. So I was just thrown into the commercial sector of the, of our lifestyle, as well as the educational component. Conference was staged at the Empress Hotel, which I don't know if you've been to Victoria, but it's one of the most prestigious old hotels from the past. It's over a hundred years old. It was staged there, but it's not cheap.

Michael Dugan: 21:53

Oh,

Ellen Bayens: 21:54

To dine there that the conference was hosted there, but I just knew that people from across Canada would want to venture out in the downtown area could enjoy some gluten free food. Any celiac knows they wouldn't know where to eat, but we knew our celiac community had that information. So I created a map. of the restaurants in the downtown area. There was less than 10 of them, a bright lime green map that was in every delegates bag. And I also went out with that bright green sign and went to the restaurants and said, there are 600 celiacs coming to town next weekend. Could you put this sign in your window? So they'll be able to find you. We've told them about you. That was transformative. The restaurants were sold out. The celiac said, if There's a map to gluten free restaurants in Victoria. Can you make a map of gluten free restaurants in the city that we live in?

Michael Dugan: 22:47

Oh, wow.

Ellen Bayens: 22:49

And I said, Absolutely. Just give me your list of restaurants. And then I had a wonderful woman, a friend of mine who said to me, Denise Hanson, you can just call her Denise. And she said, Ellen, you have an idea here. In 2008, gluten free restaurants. didn't exist. People didn't know what gluten was. But we, because Victoria is like Seattle and Portland, we're groovy and we like alternate food and we're very healthy. There were a lot of restaurants that were already attuned to making food, whole food, without a lot of gluten. refined ingredients. So we were in the perfect place for the birth of the gluten free movement in Canada. And when the delegates went back to their 29 different chapters across Canada at that time, they quickly compiled those lists of gluten free restaurants, sent them to me. And my friend Denise said, you have to create a website of all of these restaurants. I said, okay. So for one year, from 2008, may to 2009, I created this website with Denise's support, compiled everything. I had to engage a web developer. I really knew nothing. I didn't have an email address. I didn't know a spreadsheet from a Bedsheet. I was a stay at home mom.

Michael Dugan: 24:03

Wow.

Ellen Bayens: 24:04

And within that year, I went to the next conference in Kitchener, Waterloo, Ontario. And I presented this resource and I told everyone about it to say you came to our conference last year. This is something that I've created for you. And that's how the Celiac scene came to pass.

Michael Dugan: 24:21

Wow. And it's just, I can't get over how detailed it is. And are there other people helping you? Because as a podcaster, I have a little bit of help. I have a writer. My wife does some of the design, the core stuff I do myself. And I'm always looking. So if you're listening out there and you want to be part of Voice4Chefs, I'm always looking for the right person because we do some amazing things. But do you have help doing this? Or are you doing it all on your own?

Ellen Bayens: 24:43

Of course, help can always be purchased. So I do, I did have a web developer. I have an IT guy who has saved my bacon in more ways than one. You're in the technology field. So I've outsourced a variety of apps that can help to improve my presentation. But I know that you could probably do a lot for my celiac scene then. Then I'm doing for myself, but fundamentally, and this is old school social media networking is I believed in what I had to say. I go down every rabbit hole, your home baker, you run a food truck, anything, anybody that contributes to our gluten free diet. Quality of life. I'm curious about, and I always support them and I give them the publicity that they deserve because without them, we wouldn't have quality of life. Victoria and Vancouver Island have a lot of independent entrepreneurs making granola, making pastry donuts, deep fried donuts. All of those people are as passionately It was a naturally evolving network of people who were interested in gluten free in whatever way the retailers wanted to know what would we like to buy their chefs started to call me to say, can you come in and teach us how to serve gluten free food? Gluten free food, how to train our staff, how to set up our kitchens. I had two interviews this past week alone.

Michael Dugan: 26:09

Oh, wow.

Ellen Bayens: 26:10

Where I went into a restaurant to troubleshoot or to help to streamline their food prep. I've spoken at distributors who provide the food en masse. to, to their clients. There were restauranteurs and retailers there. I've spoken there. I've spoken at conferences. There is something that I seem to know, which is obvious to me, but that other people were learning in those last 15 years. And fortunately I have a resource where it's all just heaping up like a huge information silo of things, gluten free and specifically to this area of Canada. But what I share is. is informative for anybody with celiac disease. It's global.

Michael Dugan: 26:53

Yeah, there's no question. It's global.

Ellen Bayens: 26:54

And so has the gluten free movement. It became a celebrity diet, and we can talk about that. But also, it's a moneymaker. If you have served gluten free food at a restaurant, you can bring more people in. At bakeries, gluten bakeries, they say, we've got gluten free buns that we can serve you. And to varying degrees of, Safety and integrity. There is money to be made in our medical diet. Now, how bizarre is that? Is there any other diet that people want to adopt? Keto, nut free, allergen free. Nobody really, unless you have a special interest, there's no reason to do it. But the gluten free diet had a cachet that transformed the lives of the general public, but also our community, because we've ridden that wave for years now because of the commercial interest. in our diet. And that's come with some pluses and minuses, I have to say.

Michael Dugan: 27:42

Do you have any success stories that you could share from a follower that's embraced a gluten free lifestyle after engaging with your website, your content?

Ellen Bayens: 27:51

Yes, very much. There is a restaurant here, and I'll never forget Six Mile Pub. It's in Victoria.

Michael Dugan: 27:57

Okay.

Ellen Bayens: 27:57

And he is a, David Wong, the owner, is a wonderful person to be in the hospitality industry. He also fell into it by accident and. Maybe this is all for a good reason. He was taking psychology at university. And as the proprietor of that pub, he was interviewing as they do the bride of a couple who wanted to have their wedding reception at the restaurant. He offered her some items to taste and she couldn't sample any of them. And he said, why aren't you sampling the food that you're actually asking me to provide? And she said, I have celiac disease. And he didn't know anything about it. And then he said, what are you going to be eating at the, at your reception? And she was going to be bringing her food in Tupperware. And that's what we celiacs do in that day. We can't be sure that a restaurant or even a family member can possibly understand the ingredient sourcing and the cross contact prevention that we need for our medical health. She didn't want to be sick on her wedding day, not to mention her honeymoon. So she would be bringing Tupperware, perhaps she was planning to have the restaurant put it on a plate. And that was this awakening that David had, that he wanted to make sure that in his industry, the hospitality industry, at his restaurant, that he could serve a bride The food she needed on one of the most important days of her life. And he revisited all his ingredients. He revisited the protocol. He sourced everything gluten free, nut free, allergen free, dairy free. He did it all. He really, he deconstructed the food he offered, put it back together in a way. All his deep fryers are gluten free. All the batter that he uses to coat anything that you want to deep fry are gluten free. It's very difficult. To be served an unsafe meal at his pub.

Michael Dugan: 29:44

Wow.

Ellen Bayens: 29:44

And he's trained a succession of chefs and servers, and I would hold him up as a beacon of light for restaurants in Victoria and across Canada on how to reconfigure your business so that you can accommodate the gluten free. And he knew something that I don't think a lot of people realized. Someone wants to take me out for dinner. If I were to have a wedding, if anyone is coming to town, the question is where can I eat? Where can Ellen have a safe meal? And I bring my family, my friends, and evidently the entire celiac scene community following. To these restaurants. We are compelled to find a safe place to eat. Now, subsequent to David, he was certainly a thought leader. There are more and more restaurants watching what he did. We now have a hundred percent gluten free restaurant opening up on the island. We have more hundred percent gluten free restaurants in this small part of Canada than anywhere else in Canada, or I would say in North America, because something happened.

Michael Dugan: 30:43

Oh my gosh.

Ellen Bayens: 30:44

It was an incubator for gluten free living here on Victoria and Vancouver Island. And because we attract so many tourists, because we have a lot of wonderful things to see here, people come from all over North America, use the celiac scene to guide them to restaurants where they can eat out safely. And people actually plan their holidays based on the gluten free bakery in Smith, the 100 percent gluten free restaurant in Nanaimo, the 100 percent gluten free restaurant in Port Alberni, the gluten free ice cream truck. It's incredible when I think about it. It's incredible that it hasn't happened everywhere. But I think through the Celiac vaccine and pulling all of these people together, it's a resource where. If you're new to the diet or new to town, you can come to the celiac scene and you'll know how to live your life. You'll know how to advocate for your child in school. You'll know how to order a gluten free meal when you're afraid to ask the question. It's all there because I've lived it.

Michael Dugan: 31:38

We have to go there right now because it's so interesting. I have a friend named Valerie Ensor and she's one of my heroes. I met her in Toastmasters years ago and She's mentored me off and on here and there and we lost touch. We connected again. She listened to Kimberly's podcast and she reached out and she was like really excited about it. So I reached out to her and I said, thanks for listening. It turns out she runs a gluten free group on Facebook. It's very big. She has a support group. She has a support group and she's the one I want to connect you to. And after this, I'm going to, I'm going to do that. You probably do, but she's. a sweetheart of a person and she's so passionate about giving back to the community. It's incredible sometimes when I see what she's doing in so many different ways, not just this, but she's a mountaineer and she's just really involved in helping people. And I love that spirit. What I wanted to get to is she asked me, She said, could you come up or connect to some chefs and ask them about how to ask questions when they go out to eat? And I saw the document that you sent me that's on your website. And I'm like, I want to share that with our listeners around the world, because if you're facing these challenges or you want to take on these challenges and change your diet, this is the resource to go to. And I will put that out there if you want on a link,

Ellen Bayens: 32:55

it's your license to dine. I call it a license to dine gluten free

Michael Dugan: 33:00

and you're helping Valerie solve a complex problem because I want to share that with her. And I want to connect the two of you and maybe you can come to her group and talk about it because I think that would be an amazing conversation. But anyway, you might be able to do it remote too. She's an amazing person and she just really inspires me. I think she might be celiac. I have another, oh my gosh. Okay. We have to talk about this dear friend of mine that I met on Clubhouse, which if you're listening as an audio only app, and it's amazing, Clubhouse is a way to connect to people around the world and have conversations about celiac. You could have conversations about food. You can have conversations about anything. I met this amazing woman named Paige she listened to Kimberly's episode. She's been a follower of Voice 4Chefs forever, and she has Celiac. And I just, I couldn't believe it, but she's a foodie. Like she loves talking about food. She went to culinary art school and she's an amazing woman. She helps run a nonprofit. She's just done amazing things, giving back to the community. But anyway, all these people you think. It's a small group. It's not. It's a huge group of people. It all started just because of the interview with Kimberly. But now I'm meeting all these incredible people. It's inspiring me. So I wanted to put a shout out to those people as well. Continuing on, we're gonna wrap up, but can you share any of your favorite celiac or gluten free? Recipes and explain why you love them.

Ellen Bayens: 34:18

This is the irony of running a resource that began as a restaurant resource and has become a lifestyle resources that I am so not into cooking.

Michael Dugan: 34:28

But what do you eat?

Ellen Bayens: 34:30

What do I eat? I eat a whole foods diet, everything from scratch because the challenge with gluten free food and everyone who is diagnosed probably goes through these steps. Okay. I can't have bread. I can't have. Gluten bread. Where's my gluten free bread? Where's my gluten free pizza? Where's my gluten free cookies and things like that? So you're emotionally, you're, all of that's been torn away from you. So we do go to the processed foods. But what I've learned in my journey, certainly went through my fitness lifestyle before I was diagnosed is how ultra processed foods and gluten free food is. Mostly ultraprocessed is that it is not good for our health and our society, our culture. Celiac disease has a person turning around the labels, looking at the ingredient labels and realizing, I'm not sure I want to eat this. For instance, what did I have for supper last night? Chicken legs coated in cayenne, garlic, cumin, red cabbage with onion, apple cider vinegar, sweet potatoes. Broccoli and brussels sprouts and it was one more thing, but it was a completely whole foods meal. That is. Gluten free and I just enjoy every flavor that and every color in the foods that I eat. That's it.

Michael Dugan: 35:50

That sounds good. Yeah. That sounds really good to me.

Ellen Bayens: 35:52

I, and on top of that, a sidebar, I adopt intermittent fasting or I eat in certain timeframes and I find that's really been healing for my digestion. That all said, there's nothing like a gluten free French fry or deep fried chicken wings or deep fried poutine. And I actually create a list of restaurants and food trucks. that offer dedicated deep fryers. There's more than 50 on the island and that list of safe french fries is the go to list for tourists because we can't find safe french fries but we love it. Deep fried donuts, like all of those decadent things as a foil to the way I live my life. Day in, day out.

Michael Dugan: 36:41

And there's a couple of chefs too, that you mentioned to me. And Kimberly's definitely one of them, but there's a couple others that, that you mentioned, can you highlight anything about them for us?

Ellen Bayens: 36:50

I think, I don't know Kimberly that well, but she does come from Vancouver Island and we connected through you and vice versa. She's also, her health journey is much deeper and broader. So Kimberly has. in addition to celiac disease has additional autoimmune disorders, which are we collect them. It seems, or there are a constellation of autoimmune conditions that she's had to manage her diet. I think it's offered her healing her health healing. So she is dug down deeper than I certainly have. And we are so grateful for people like her because she offers possibilities for people who have multiple food sensitivities.

Michael Dugan: 37:29

Yeah, I agree. So lastly, how do we connect with you? We want to go to celiac scene. What else can we do to connect with you?

Ellen Bayens: 37:36

Okay. So if you know how to spell celiac C E L I A C, you can find the celiac scene on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter. And my website is the celiac scene.com. It's a one woman operation supported by a whole community. You can always reach out to me and then I will direct you to what I have on the resource or where to go. It's all offered free to the community. I can't do enough. for my community or for anyone like you interested in our community. So as long as I am able to I want to support celiacs and those who are not yet diagnosed, that's a very important group of people that we need to reach.

Michael Dugan: 38:19

And finally, I always ask this of our guests because. We're global, and we have a global reach. Do you have any final message or takeaway today that you want to share with our audience and your audience?

Ellen Bayens: 38:34

I do, and I'm surprised that I have this all at my fingertips, but the most important thing whether you're, no matter what you're struggling with, is to reach out to the people who've, who are already there. The answers lie in our community. It's not unknown. You're not the first person, but there is a whole cohort of people who have struggled like you and who are happy to lend their support to you. It's the primal nature of humanity is that we need each other and celiacs need other celiacs. And once you've got that support and the information within the community, You can go on to lead your best, healthiest, happiest life, despite the diagnosis. You are going to be okay.

Michael Dugan: 39:19

Ellen, I can't thank you enough for being a guest on Voice4Chefs today. You give so much to so many people, and it really shows, and I just thank you.

Ellen Bayens: 39:29

Thank you. I didn't know it was in me, but you've captured my passion, and you've reinvigorated me. Thank you.