I will address those with autoimmune diseases other than celiac disease, those who chose the gluten-free diet because they understood that it was good for them, whether or not it was recommended by their doctor. And I will speak from my point of view, I am the person I know best, although in this department I still have surprises sometimes.
As I wrote here before, I don’t only use certified products, I use Solaris natural flours for example, although their range also contains wheat, rye and barley flours, so the production line could be contaminated. I sometimes put a teaspoon of soy sauce in a pan with 2 servings of vegetables. Or I buy something that does not contain any ingredients with gluten, but has the specification: “may contain traces of gluten”. When I say that I don’t strictly follow the gluten-free diet, that’s what I mean. Not that I sometimes run into the wheat bread basket or the gluten muffin when I go to visit. I haven’t eaten anything with concentrated gluten in 8 years. I remember the first year was quite difficult. I was intolerant to traces of gluten and every accidental contamination would give me nasty flares of pain. I didn’t realize that I had contaminated myself and I thought that the gluten-free diet was bullshit and that I was complicating my life for nothing. But I didn’t give up and after a year I didn’t have those flares anymore. I hate it when something is forbidden to me, when someone tries to put limits on me. But I understood that the gluten-free diet is a must for me and I complied. I’ve turned this into my own brand, it’s my diamond, not the piece of coal that makes me dirty and complicates my life. I’m “the little blonde one without gluten”.
Seriously, if it’s the Holiday season, we don’t have to abdicate our being until the New Year’s Eve passes, it’s not all about the cake, but about our general well-being, how we feel about ourselves, what we’re missing that we can’t help ourselves to eat a slice of cake, even though we know we’ll be sick after that. Or we don’t know and say the diet is bullshit. We make our sweets, our bread, and even if they don’t come out the same, who knows, maybe we’ll discover new tastes that we like as much as the ones we’ve been used to all our lives up to that point. Of course, it’s hard at the beginning, I don’t always get them right, but when I do get them, the hard-earned victory is sweeter.
Think that we can sit at the table with our loved ones, with bread made by us, or without bread at all, with something sweet made by us, or without sweets at all, and we can enjoy the rest of the goodies, we need to ask the host, if we are in visit, what they put in them. We avoid caviar with semolina or puff pastry, for example. Celiacs can’t do that. They can’t go and sit down at the table when visiting if everything is not prepared strictly gluten-free. You will say: “wow, poor people!”. For them, the strict gluten-free diet is medicine, they understand that and are grateful that they don’t need to fill their bodies with chemicals to feel good. Or they are waiting for a miracle drug to be invented to relieve them of the torment of the diet. Do you see? It’s all in the way we think. Our well-being is there. How we perceive things, how we perceive ourselves. To understand that things are as they are and not otherwise. That lamenting and crying for pity doesn’t help anyone and to look for solutions ourselves, nothing falls from the sky.
That being said, I wish you a Happy New Year, or something. Open your eyes and heart and choose what is good for you, even if at the moment it does not seem like it would be good. The easiest way is not always the best. Wow, did you see what cool sweets I learned to make? If I can, you can too, I’m sure I’m not a genius.
