Being Coeliac
October 5th, 2010 § 1 Comment
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No biscuit for me thanks. No, I’m not on a diet but thanks for assuming. I’m coeliac. It means I can’t eat any bread, pasta, pizza, or 400 million other things for fear of developing an iffy tummy. I’m allergic to gluten, a protein found in wheat and some other grains. Think back over what you have eaten today. I don’t know you or your tastes but I can tell you it all had wheat in it.
Wheat is in EVERYTHING. People are horrified when I say I can’t eat bread but that’s the least of it. Bread is big and solid, you can’t miss it. It’s inherently so bready that it’s incredibly easy to avoid. The real problem is the secret wheat; flour put where flour has no business being.
For example, I can’t have soup as many soups are thickened with wheat flour. I can’t have soy sauce or sausages or malt vinegar or gravy. I can’t have cornflakes. I really think food companies are just messing with me sometimes. Since when is barley a sweetener? My granny used to put barley into stews. Rice and corn flour work just as well as a thickener and nobody is allergic to them (prove me wrong immune system).
I can get substitutes for a lot wheat based food. Gluten free pasta is perfectly serviceable, albeit with a tendency to disintegrate into its component parts. You can even buy a pizza base that’s not any worse than Dominoes, even if you top it with Haloumi and rat faeces.
Coeliac bread is a problem. If you have celiac friends don’t bother buying it, it’s completely inedible. It has the taste and consistency of Madera cake found at the back of your grannies cupboard left over from a mad aunts wedding in 1965.
Some desperate coeliacs claim putting bread in the microwave ‘freshens’ it but really all you are left with is warm and chewy, disgusting bread. Sandwiches are therefore out of my reach and it’s amazing how immobile food becomes when you don’t have bread to cart it around in. My lunch options are now salad or hunger.
The worst thing about being celiac is nobody knows what you are talking about. Every rejected cookie leads to a 20 minute conversation about the nature of the disease and god help you if you try to eat in a restaurant. Do you think a chef knows when he has used flour? Ask one, I dare you. I’ll wait here with my rice cakes.
