With the Opening Ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics happening today, we were interested to find out that one of the many Olympic hopefuls has a gluten allergy.
Dana Vollmer, the 24 year old swimmer who will be going for the gold in London this August, is not only a world champion – she is also gluten intolerant. Vollmer recognizes the difficulty of maintaining a healthy gluten-free diet; she says that the toughest part is traveling and trying to find foods that she can eat on the road:
“It’s not like you can grab something at the airport… A lot of times teams will go to sandwich shops and different things. So it’s hard like that … but I have a bag of food and I just travel with food.”
That’s something that all of us with food allergies can relate to!
Vollmer recently joined forces with Crunchmaster gluten-free crackers as a spokeswoman and has said that one of her favorite gluten-free foods is one that she tried right after discovering her allergy: Venice Bakery gluten-free pizza crusts. Now she says that she lives on it saying, “I swear it tastes like normal pizza”.
Vollmer will be competing on the USA Olympic team in the 100 meter butterfly and 4 x 200 meter freestyle relay in London this summer. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook to keep up with her Olympic run, and be sure to out this awesome video of Dana discussing her allergies and cooking gluten-free!
