One of the worse discoveries of my life was when I figured out that I had Celiac disease. Basically, it means I now cannot have gluten which is in wheat, barley, and rye. I was the typical 18-year-old American, so I loved playing my sports and eating pizza. In the spring of my high school senior year, the sudden and severe pain that developed in my chest came out of nowhere. At first, I believed it was a weird onset of heartburn. As the days went by and the pain kept coming back every day, I became paranoid I was going to experience some sort of heart attack. What really confused me was why the chest pain only returned every day after lunch. I began to suspect it was a dietary cause, especially since my mother had developed Celiac’s a few years ago.
Every one of my taste buds hoped for all that is good in the world that gluten was not the cause of my chest pain. I was desperate to make the constant tightness go away, so I went gluten-free for a week. Thankfully and horrifyingly, I no longer felt like I was going to experience cardiac arrest, but I dreaded the conclusion of my experiment. In order to come to a final synopsis, I ate a few pieces pizza while over at my friend’s house. The minutes prior to digestion, I was praying that my body would stay in its normal state, but alas, those slices would be the last normal pizza I ever ate. The pain returned with a vengeance.
From then on, I had to give up eating anything with wheat. Not only did I have to stop eating wondrous white bread on my sandwiches and as an appetizer at restaurants, any food with regular flour were no longer a possible option for consumption. Bye-bye pizza, cake, pasta, doughnuts, cookies, waffles, and all other food worth consuming. Nothing is worse than when my sports team or club would order tons pizza and I ended up with a mediocre salad, especially when there would be tons of leftovers. Who knew pizzerias would not be experts in the art of salad making? I am never resentful of other people being able to eat wheat, but what perplexes me the most is who the hell would stop eating wheat by choice?
The trend toward people becoming gluten-free seems like the greatest food fad of all time. People falsely believe that going gluten-free would be automatically good for them. According to Beyond Celiac, an estimated 18 million or 6% of Americans have at least a gluten sensitivity. That means for the other 94% of Americans, going gluten-free will do absolutely nothing to their health. Unless you stop eating gluten in order to incentivize yourself to not eat junk food, you are being an idiot. I can get just as fat eating gluten-free doughnuts with the only difference being paying more and eating terrible tasting doughnuts. The food marketing industry brilliantly fed off this consumer stupidity by labelling even the obviously natural wheat-less food like yogurt or fruit gluten-free. No duh, an apple does not have gluten in it!
Why I really disdain gluten-free by choice people is because they tend to be the people just looking for that next diet to glorify in front of their friends or women hoping that any diet will bring them the model body they always wanted (Apologies for the aggressive sexism). Vegans are guilty of constantly mentioning their diet to people like it's CrossFit, but at least there is some justifiable reason to go vegan. It’s not like there is wheat’s rights abuse on the farms. When I have to ask for something gluten-free at my dining hall or at a restaurant, I always feel this sense of being harshly judged as someone inconveniencing others for the sake of a dieting fad. My friends can easily take a jab at me for being gluten-free by saying I did it because I “saw Kim Kardashian decided to try it.” I feel a sense of lost American male identity not being able to drink beer or eat several hamburgers in one sitting. Isn’t that the American Dream?
At the same time, I am severely conflicted about my feelings toward gluten-free by choice people. Although their stupidity continues to amaze and frustrate me, I would not have the access to relatively cheap and wide variety of gluten-free substitutes at restaurants and the grocery store. I eat pasta, pizza, and flour-filled desserts all the time thanks to the many products with corn fillings and rice flour. All the famous town pizzerias in my hometown and at my college town serve gluten-free pizzas. Most grocery stores now have entire sections dedicated to gluten free foods. I can cook any recipe I want with all the flour, bread, and pasta substitutes available.
Without the high demand for gluten-free products thanks to the dumb, fad following masses, I would be pretty out of luck to be able to get decent food. I owe a debt of gratitude to the gluten-free by choice because without them, my life with a lack of a dietary choice would be a whole lot worse and hungry.
