GlutenWatchers

In this media-saturated world, everything under the sun is put into a strait-jacket & presented to the world for their consumption. So if you are a celiac, well, there is a plethora of gluten-free goods out there, more & more restaurants are offering GF menus, so there…buy gluten-free, dine at GF places, & you are good.

The reality, mine as well as that of a number of people whose experiences I have heard/ read, is a lot more nuanced than that. One year into my GF status, I recently ventured to bake & eat Betty Crocker’s GF chocolate chip cookies; result, a bad reaction from having just a half small-sized cookie. Then a couple of weeks ago, I had a bad bout of hyper-acidity & reached for some delayed-action Omeprazole. Before consuming it though, I googled about the safety of this drug for celiacs & came across several forum postings where celiacs claimed that they routinely took this drug without any problems. So after taking one pill a day for 4-5 days, I was amazed to find that I was definitely glutened. But from what, was the question? I follow a nutritious but restricted diet with very few surprises from day to day, so my suspicion fell on the pack of Baked Lays that I had partially eaten. A check of the ingredients revealed that this product contains soy. Now here’s something interesting too: on my one-year journey, I have moved from consuming & tolerating soy quite well to where I am now, where soy bothers me substantially.
So I steel myself not to eat any more Baked Lays, & hope that every passing day will make me feel better. After a day or two, I forgot to take my nightly dose of the Omeprazole tablet, & found that I felt distinctly better the next day. So now, Omeprazole was added to my ‘Discard & Never Touch’ list. And I am finding that the list includes most packaged foods, even the ones labeled GF. I was sent a welcome pack of GF goodies by a celiac organization, & found that I could eat nothing that they had sent without setting off a reaction. Now it could just be me, but it could also be that the label GF allows for too much gluten than can be tolerated by all celiacs ( a GF label ensures that the product contains less than 20 parts per million of gluten, so yes, GF products may have some gluten in them). Also, how rigorous is the FDA’s testing of GF products, or is it simply left to companies to self-certify products as GF? Given the FDA’s record, & the New York Times’ recent story E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection (Registration on the NYTimes may be required to be able to read the story) of an E-Coli infection that has left a 22 year-old girl incapacitated for life, I would not have too much faith in the FDA’s methods; couple that with the big-bucks that the GF industry has become, & one knows that once again it is finally upto the buyer to practice caution.

So you see the life of a celiac involves constant, constant vigilance. And oddly enough, one celiac’s food seems to be another’s poison! Or rather, it is better not to rely on a friend or online poster’s testament of a product, & instead call up the company involved about what the product actually contains.

That leads me to another story. I once did precisely that, I called up Target to check if their generic Ibuprofen was GF. The woman at the other end informed me that she was not sure, & would need to check, & could she call back? She did call back, after 2 days, & informed me that this particular batch was GF, but that I should call up if I happened to buy another bottle of their Ibuprofen, since the supplier & ingredients may be different! We sure do have our work cut out for us!

Do you have such a story of your own celiac travails & trials? Please do share them here by adding your comments to this story below, we would love to hear diverse voices on this subject.