But many people who are gluten intolerant are not so lucky. Their friends, family, and/or coworkers challenge their diet at every turn.
I can sympathize. Every now and then, there’s someone who doesn’t know me very well, who doesn’t understand celiac disease or gluten intolerance, and who just doesn’t get it. Someone who thinks I’m just being high maintenance for the fun of it.
As a very low maintenance type of person who needs this diet to be happy and healthy, it’s hard not to take their attitude personally. Such uninformed challenges to my need to be very careful about what I eat can be infuriating, frustrating, and depressing. I didn’t choose this disease. I have it. I’ve accepted that, but other people who don’t accept it, can still make it difficult. (Those who intentionally would poison someone like me? Well that's a whole other rant.)
But such attitudes are not uncommon in the life of anyone on any kind of special diet. There’s something about diets that just gets under some people’s skin. I don’t get it. Why do people care so much what someone else chooses to eat or not eat, regardless of whether it's the cure for a disease, an attempt to lose weight, for their value system, or just a trial to see if it makes them feel better?
Whatever the reason, people often butt in with brilliantly unhelpful statements like:
- “Don't worry about it,”
- “Just pull the bread off,”
- “Oh, just relax. It's not going to kill you,”
- “Stop being so picky,”
- “Just taste it; it's really good,”
- “Why didn't you come to our pizza party?”
- “I'm sure that's safe; it doesn't mention wheat,” or
- “Just eat it and deal with it.”
I recently heard someone new to the gluten-free diet ask how to respond to these people, saying they try to explain their symptoms and how gluten affects their body. I will educate people who are interested, who want to know how it affects me. But for those people who respond like uncaring idiots, thinking only about how my diet makes them uncomfortable — I usually don't go into details and try to explain all my symptoms. The people who respond this way just aren't the concerned, listening type.
My advice: when you come across these people, just keep it simple and take care of yourself. It's always easier to come up with something after the fact, but when it comes to maintaining your composure and your diet, sometimes it helps to come up with them ahead of time.
Some potentially helpful (and some probably just wishful thinking) retorts
- (Laugh.) No.No.No.No.No.Nooo. You — absolutely — don't get it. (Raise eyebrows and just leave it at that.)
- No.No.No.No.No.No.No.No — No.
- Cancer patients have chemo. Celiacs have a strict diet. All in all, I'm pretty lucky.
- It's just SO not worth it.
- What are you, a sadist? Do you hate me? This stuff is like poison and extreme torture all deliverable in one tiny invisible speck.
- Trust me, this diet feels absurd and having to be so ridiculously careful sucks. But unfortunately for me, it isn't a fad and it isn't a choice and the tiniest most minuscule — invisible to the naked eye —speck of gluten can make me suffer in totally unacceptable, unbearable ways.
- Unfortunately for me, this diet isn't a fad and it isn't a choice. It's a medical necessity, and strict — ridiculously, stupidly, absurdly, frustratingly, annoyingly strict — adherence is the only treatment for what is a very destructive and potentially deadly disease.
- Would you eat arsenic just because it were served at the table? Well for me, gluten is very much like a very strong poison. The “short term” effects are simply impolite for conversation, but they are utterly miserable and last weeks, and in the long-term, if I don't follow the diet, the results can be deadly.
- (For those who know someone with the disease that is less carful) Yeah, I drew the short stick. Some people with this disease are lucky and have nice, mildly uncomfortable symptoms. They can cheat and have only consequences they are willing to suffer through and they don’t worry about the potential long-term consequences. But trust me, no one here wants to see what happens to me if I get even the smallest most inconceivably tiny speck of gluten. It's just not pretty. Sooo not pretty.
- Trust me, I would love to not have to worry about this stuff. I am not a high maintenance person and I love food — Unfortunately, gluten is pure evil, and it hates me, and being anything less than ridiculously vigilant is a recipe for pain and misery like you wouldn't believe.
- Trust me, I've learned the hard way that I will pay severely for any slacking on being uber-careful about this.
- If people were passing around heaping platefuls of radioactive waste, would you want to join them for lunch?
- Do you get migraines? Migraines that make you vomit, don't respond to medication, and last for 4 days? Then don't tell me not to worry about it.
- This diet is ridiculous, and high maintenance, and it can be such a PITA, but the way I feel by being absurdly strict in following it, the complete turn around in my health, energy, sense of well being, and ability to function like a normal human being again — it's a life change in the BEST kind of way.
) — how much more unsafe is it if you intentionally eat an entire piece of pizza?