I, like many other people around the world, have discovered/ developed a gluten intolerance and there are plenty of people who just don’t get it.
It sucks. If you share a food intolerance, hopefully you can relate and if not, get your note pad ready because you are probably one of these people.
P.S feel free to mentally substitute ‘gluten’ for any other intolerance/ allergy you may have.
1- The Gluten police.
These people are the WORST. There are some people I know who like to police my gluten eating. I call them the gluten police.
The thing is, most of us are intolerant not celiac.
MOST PEOPLE CAN EAT A COOKIE WITHOUT NEEDING TO BE ADMITTED TO HOSPITAL AND IF THEY WERE CELIAC THEY WOULD KNOW WHAT HAS GLUTEN IN IT.
So please do not say to someone ‘oh that’s got gluten in it, guess you’ll have to miss out’, when you are offering a plate of grandmas’s homemade slice.
That is just cruel. We just have an allergy and we want the treat just as much as you do.
Also, we know how much gluten we can consume without side effects.
And we know, from experience, what has a lot of gluten and what consequences we are prepared to endure for a slice of regular pizza.
How do you avoid being filed under gluten police in my head? Don’t decide what I can and can’t eat.
2- The Gluten Free dieters.
These people are our rivals, the all-blacks to our wallabies, the Collingwood to… well everyone else.
These people make you feel like you need to defend yourself because of the misconceptions they give the public.
These are the kind of people who go gluten free to loose weight and are not actually intolerant. People love to get us confused.
IF YOU’VE LOST WEIGHT IT’S BECAUSE YOU ATE LESS CARBS NOT LESS GLUTEN.
I’m not refusing gluten because i’m trying to be healthy, I would really prefer to order the burger and not the salad.
But I can’t because within an hour I will be 4 months pregnant with a gluten baby.
Please see photo.
Also gluten and diet should never be used in the same sentence because a diet is a choice and gluten-free is essential. There should be no such thing as a gluten-free ‘diet’.
However if you are on a diet and would like to choose the gluten-free option because it happens to be more healthy or whatever, go for it!
More demand equals more supply and more choice for us (the suckers who can’t magically be un-gluten-intolerant when we are starving and want the restaurant bread served before meals).
3- The Gluten Researcher
Everyone who is celiac/intolerant to any food knows someone like this.
These people are usually of the late gen x or baby boomer age where this is all so new and exciting for them because no one had food allergies back in their day.
I don’t know about anyone else but as soon as I realised I was intolerant, my dad started tagging me in all sorts of gluten related Facebook posts and coming home from the shops all excited about a new product he noticed is gluten free.
Dad actually called me once, while he was at the shops, to tell me there is a whole row of gluten free bread at Coles.
Yep amazing stuff isn’t it dad, thanks so much for the call.
It’s a tricky thing.
It is so much better to be in the gluten researcher category because it means you actually care about our gluten free status.
But it is also just plain annoying.
So my advice to these people is simply, hold your horses, calm your farm, we know how to live our lives free of gluten but the occasional GF treat is more than welcome, thanks much love. xox
Lucy's Life 