Reactions run the gamut when I tell people I’m gluten intolerant. Not long ago a mutual friend introduced me to a woman who runs the local gluten intolerance support group. Within minutes, this stranger and I were sharing stories of epic flatulence like “rock bottom” stories at an AA meeting.
Then there’s the other end of the spectrum. A while back I was at a Durango watering hole talking to the sous chef of a prominent Main Street restaurant. When I mentioned that I had issues with gluten, his bearing turned as frosty as my non-grain based vodka and soda.
“Oh, please. Everyone is gluten intolerant nowadays,” he had said with barely veiled rage.
Keeping my cool, I told him that I couldn’t speak for everyone, but give me a sandwich and I could clear a room.
What is it about the gluten issue that elicits such passion? To be fair, I can see this chef’s point of view. Maybe he sees the gluten issue as just another food fad, a al Atkins.
Those of us who know that pasta spells disastah know that this is no fad.
Here’s a cold, hard fact: when someone with Celiac disease ingests gluten, the microvilli of the small intestine are damaged. As a result, the body cannot effectively absorb nutrients, which leads to malnourishment.
The selfsame stranger with whom I shared tales of gastrointestinal gore does more than run a 12-step program for odiferous unfortunates. Jess Kelly, MNT, runs Durango Nutrition, a nutritional consulting company. She tells the story of her mother’s reaction.
“When I told her I was gluten-free, she said, ‘Oh vegetarian, gluten-free—it’s always something with you.’”
Kristen Lum, a Durango-based naturopathic doctor, says that for every ten clients she tests for food allergies, seven have a gluten sensitivity.
“Just a decade ago gluten intolerance and Celiac disease was uncommon,” says Lum. She points to a recent University of Maryland study that found that 1 in 133 Americans has Celiac disease.
A recent Mayo Clinic study found that Celiac disease is four times more common than it was 50 years ago, due to genetic modification and the use of chemicals in food production.
According to Lum, the wheat gene has been genetically modified to contain 60% more gluten than it did a century ago. Ostensibly to give freakish longevity to the chewy texture of a Chips Ahoy.
Even people who are not genetically predisposed to have Celiac disease can fall prey to the overmarketing of wheat based products, according to some studies.
“We are inundated with gluten all the time,” says Kelley. “It’s overconsumption that’s becoming the problem.”
Basically, if you don’t have it, you can get it.
Which leads me to, well, me. I am not a Celiac. I have what you’d call a gluten sensitivity.
It started, as most epics do, with a love story. Actually, the end of a love story. I called off my wedding to a man I had known since I had to use a fake ID to buy beer.
I replaced sleep and food with Ambien and exercise. What I did manage to cram down consisted of low maintenance wheat products: cereal, bread, pasta.
After a while, I began to have severe abdominal pain coupled with extreme bloating. Read: basketball.
I decided to do an experiment and cut out wheat from my diet. Once I added it back in, the carefree days of doing, well, anything else besides lying on my bed moaning in pain were gone.
I’d never had a problem eating wheat before. My staggering consumption of Thanksgiving stuffing was legendary. This was confusing and daunting at the same time.
I took the new diet wrinkle on as a challenge. This resulted in quite possibly some of the most horrid dishes ever to disgrace my kitchen table. Like when I substituted soy for wheat flour for sugar cookies, for which even the dog had a hard time mustering up enthusiasm. Or the time I desecrated one of my husband’s favorite dishes with a gluten-free calzone bearing a striking resemblance in taste and texture to plaster of Paris.
In my darkest days, I felt a hopeless longing to be “normal”. I remember the puzzled disappointment on my brother’s face when he took me to the best Italian restaurant in Las Vegas and I said I’d just have a salad. Or the self pitying frustration I’d felt when I went to a friend’s house for dinner who had served delicious looking flour enchiladas.
Kelley points out that eating as a social activity has been so woven into our culture as to become canon; the literal act of breaking bread.
“The key is not to be afraid of food,” says Kelley. She points out that because Celiacs can’t eat many processed foods, they have to focus on whole foods. “You’re not deprived, you’re blessed.”
I kept trying, and eventually, I began to succeed. I redeemed myself for the Calzone Incident with a gluten-free zucchini bread that my husband declared better than his mother’s. I learned that non-gluten flours had to be substituted in certain proportions so that your sugar cookie doesn’t taste like a shot of wheatgrass.
I’ve only recently put two and two together: I started with a broken heart and ended up with a broken gut. The stress of roiling emotions coupled with a lazy diet pushed my body over the edge.
Last Mother’s Day I held a brunch at my house, where I announced an irrepressible craving for crepes. Stifling a quiet sense of dread, I closed my eyes and wolfed down a whole wheat crepe the size of a paper plate. Then I sat back and waited for the inevitable outcome—the basketball—but it never came.
Unbeknownst to me, by limiting my gluten intake, I had been taking part in what nutritionists call a rotation diet. For a non-celiac with gluten sensitivity, this means only having wheat every four days. In this way, it is possible to “outgrow” being gluten intolerant.
“It depends on the person,” says Lum, “But if you remove the stressors, the body can heal itself.”
I am able now to eat a little bread at dinner or give in to a crepe craving with nary an intestinal hiccup. Intrinsically, my body knows that afterwards, it needs time to catch its breath.
Giving hope to bread-addicts like me, Kelley says, “It doesn’t have to be a forever thing.”
Since discovering my body’s aversion to gluten, I’ve wasted a lot of garbanzo bean flour and enough natural gas to heat a small country. My loved ones, canine and otherwise, were cruelly subjected to my stove top tinkerings ad nauseum (sometimes literally). And yes, I do miss Thanksgiving stuffing.
However, if not for the impetus of necessity, I would never have created a gluten-free raw apple pie, which can make converts of grandmothers. I wouldn’t have had an excuse to swell my already obese collection of cookbooks with volumes of gluten-free versions.
Most importantly, I restored a lost connection with food. To paraphrase a really smart old Greek guy, I let food be my medicine.
