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It’s been 11 years since I wrote my first gluten-free piece for Chronogram, called “Hold the Bread on that Sandwich Please.” As usual, we were way ahead of the wave. Gluten-free was an obscure topic in 2006. It’s now a bona fide trend. In fact, it’s become an industry. It’s become a controversy.
And it’s also become a joke: such as the person who goes to great lengths to make sure that their dinner is absolutely, entirely free from a single molecule of gluten, only to order the ordinary crumb cake for dessert. In case you’re one of those people, please stop. You’re free to inflame your cells, mess up your immune system, be an emotional mess, and strip your upper intestine of its ability to absorb nutrients. But you have no right to make life more difficult for anyone else, or cast the rest of us as phonies.
If you own a restaurant, or work as a server or prepare food, thanks for putting up with these people. There are actually those among us who need to keep gluten out of our bodies, or else we can have serious problems—long-term and immediate.
Here’s the thing to remember: Being wheat-free may not seem like a big deal to you. But to someone who is honoring this diet, the whole universe of prepared foods becomes hostile: It’s literally toxic.
Sharing food is an important aspect of social life. The feeling that gluten-sensitive people have, particularly those with celiac, is that of being excluded and left to starve. Everyone else can enjoy things that you cannot, and this is happening all the time. It’s so bad that I’ve often had to eat before dinner, if I have a hunch that the only thing gluten-free will be the celery. Yes, I will literally eat dinner before going to a dinner party. If I can get to the person preparing the food, usually they’re happy to help, though this is not always possible.
If I’m traveling, I’ll make sure I have some gluten-free snacks in my bag. Gluten-free people cannot “grab a slice” or “run out for a sandwich.” Rather, we have to map out the neighborhood, do research, and gain experience in order to be able to eat more or less normally. Note that in 2017, we have many more options available. There was a day when the only gluten-free stuff was Rice Krispies and these things called Rice Wafers, which made matzo seem like a delicacy. Today, even many ordinary supermarkets have hundreds of products that are certified gluten-free.
I was diagnosed with celiac when I was one-year-old, in April 1965. My life was saved by my Grandma Mary, and by Dr. Benjamin Spock, whose book,Baby and Child Care warned of a celiac problem known of for hundreds of years. The treatment is to stop feeding the kid wheat, barley, and rye—grains (which I will call wheat products for the purposes of this article) that contain a protein people with celiac cannot process. For an excellent introduction to the science behind this, visit Planetwaves.net/gluten.
There are no drugs to treat celiac; and if there were any, I would not be interested. This is a condition that’s entirely manageable using diet, which means knowledge and discipline. There are also lower-grade gluten sensitivities, which do not fit the definition of celiac. Others are experimenting with going off of gluten, which is a worthy goal. Gluten serves no productive nutritional purpose.
It’s either a contaminant, or used for aesthetic purposes; that is, to make a pastry feel and taste like a pastry, or to put the crunch into the crispy. As you get gluten out of your diet, you’ll start to figure out the difference between a need and a want. Another is how wheat, particularly low-quality, hybridized wheat, infiltrates our entire food system.
Getting the wheat out is not about making a dietary change. Rather, it’s about getting an understanding of food, lifestyle, and where the two meet. You will learn how to scrutinize a menu or food package. When you’re eating in a restaurant, you might find yourself playing a game of deducing the one thing on the menu you can eat. When reading a package, there’s an easy way to know for sure that something contains gluten: if the ingredient list is too long. You don’t need to read the long lists; you can assume they have gluten. When the ingredients are a few lines, read carefully and you may discover that they left it out.
Addressing gluten sensitivity, or any food sensitivity, is about total dietary awareness. You must scrutinize every last thing you put in your mouth. You must know how food is made. That means conscious, constant learning. It means having many conversations with servers and food preparers, ’til you have a real answer. If you’re in a restaurant and your server says, “There’s wheat in pasta?” try not to laugh; just ask for the chef or the manager.
Living this way as a child stoked my interest in food preparation. Grandma Mary was a deep influence: As the family chef, she was part artist and part scientist. She had the right tool for everything. She would practice new recipes the day before she had to make them for a family gathering. Between this and the constant investigation into the contents and preparation of foods, by the time I was about 20, I had worked in numerous restaurants as a server, food prep, and cook.
When I was accepted at the Culinary Institute of America, my admissions essay was called “Recipe for a Chef,” which noted that my celiac had been one source of my passion for food preparation. I chose a journalism career instead, though I never lost interest in the kitchen. When I was 22, I lived in a spiritual community for a year. Someone named Patrick Sullivan ran the kitchen. He had been a saucier at Windows on the World and executive chef at the Columbia University Faculty Club. He knew his onions.
Naturally, I shadowed him in the kitchen every minute I could, volunteering as his prep or sous chef or dishwasher or whatever he needed. I was determined to learn everything I could possibly learn from him. One thing I discovered was that you can make just about anything vegan. At that stage of his career, he was obsessed with making sumptuous vegan meals that you just could not tell did not include any meat. All it took was the will, some research and planning, and some experimentation.
So, to all you restaurateurs out there, you have no excuse. Anyone actually trained in culinary arts knows that, outside of pastries, nearly all use of flour for appetizers and main courses is unnecessary—most, as in 90 percent. If you want to help gluten-free people and also run a better kitchen, get the flour out of where it does not belong. If you cannot make a reduction (gravy or sauce) without thickening it with flour, stick to cooking for your family on Thanksgiving, or get more training.
To the places that make a real effort, thank you. I walked into Cheese Louise for the first time last weekend; it’s an actual old-school delicatessen located on Route 28. They had salmon chowder on the menu. I asked if it was thickened with flour, and the chef said, and I quote: “It’s not necessary. The soup has potatoes.” She had me at it’s not necessary.
I finally found a local place that makes gluten-free pizza the right way—they get their dough and bread products from off-premises: Enzo’s in the town of Ulster, which buys its dough from Meredith’s Bakery. Recently, I called my old landlord, Renato, who owns DiBella’s Pizza in Kingston, and he went on and on for 10 minutes about all the new gluten-free stuff he has on his menu. Dominick’s Cafe has gluten-free options every day. Anatolia in New Paltz will gladly help gluten-free people. Please tell these places I said hello.
This attitude is more than we can hope for, however. So, for the rest of this article, I’ll share my strategies for keeping gluten out of my body.
First of all, you need a little chutzpah. Just a little—enough to ask a series of questions and get real answers. You need to know in your heart and soul that the purpose of a restaurant is to serve you. Write that on your debit card. This comes with a tremendous responsibility on the part of the owners. Your job is to get the conversation onto the level of what they’re secretly planning to put into your body.
Some places have a good attitude toward gluten-sensitive people. Please patronize those places and send your friends. Spread the news on Yelp and elsewhere. Other places have a genuinely dismal attitude, as if they’ve declared ideological war and would sooner keep a dead rat in their freezer than a loaf of gluten-free bread. I suggest boycotting those places, telling your friends to do the same, and, once again, making sure that you reflect this in any review you write.
When you’re ordering, keep it friendly and matter-of-fact. It helps if you’re knowledgeable and sincere. Declare your situation upon being greeted by the server. My preferred language is, “Hello. I have celiac and we need to keep all gluten off of my plate. Can you help me with that?”
Do not feel bad about this! Enlist the server as your ally. You’re not inconveniencing anyone. You’re only helping them fulfill their dharma (life purpose). You’re helping educate them for the next customer who comes in. Be grateful when you find servers and kitchen staff who are cooperative. Leave a good tip. Tell the manager you were treated well. This kind of positive encouragement goes a long way.
As a gluten-free person, you know that you have to avoid all the obvious things that contain wheat products: breads, cakes, pies, pasta, pizza, and most snack foods. The challenge is spotting the invisible gluten, or the places where there’s cross-contamination. If you’re ordering gluten-free pizza, for example, ask about their food practices. How do they know it’s gluten-free? They should have a good answer.
The deep fryer is the perfect example of where cross-contamination happens. Most restaurants only have one of these. The French fries go in the same vat as the onion rings, the chicken fingers, the mozzarella sticks, the wheat bombs, and the rest of it. To be safe, you must avoid eating all deep-fried foods outside your home. One exception is that most major fast food systems have segregated deep-fry bins: the potatoes go in one, and the gluten stuff goes in another. You might not think of McDonald’s or Nathan’s as a godsend, but if you’re gluten-free and in a pinch, you can always have fries and tea.
I recently figured out that a taco restaurant I frequent was deep-frying the tortilla chips. I talked to the owner and he said it was too expensive to get a second deep fryer. That’s a poor excuse, in my opinion. But they could also keep a bag of ordinary chips on hand and mention on the menu that their regular chips are not gluten-free.
The other common place wheat gets into is soups and sauces. You have to ask the server what the ingredients are. For example: “Does this come with a sauce and, if so, is it gluten free?” If they don’t seem to know, politely ask them to ask the chef. Be persistent and get a real answer. Don’t be afraid to ask to read the package that an ingredient comes in. This stuff called eel sauce, used on sushi, is like gluten gel. There are many weird examples in Asian food, and you have to become something of an expert. For the most part (with the exception of soy sauce), garden-variety Chinese food is fine, except if something is deep fried. You have to ask them to keep the soy sauce out.
I frequently eat at a place in the city, and every time I go, I ask if the fries are gluten-free. The first five times, they said yes. The sixth time, the server said no, they have gluten. This called for an investigation: They had changed their ingredient that one day. You have to keep asking and, in the process, get to know the staff and the kitchen habits of the places you frequent.
In short, you have to participate in the food that you eat. As our whole society moves toward a service economy, we are increasingly removed from the actual preparation of our sources of nourishment. As a gluten-free person, or someone who loves one, you must turn this around for yourself. It’s on the level of a 24/7 mindfulness exercise. Be grateful that Zen training comes free as part of your diet.
This article appears in April 2017.
