By H. Applebaum
SAN DIEGO — I used to think going gluten free was a silly fad. All of a sudden there seemed to be something wrong with bread, and I love a good piece of bread, who doesn’t?
More than fifty years later, I can still practically taste the fresh rye bread my father gave me after returning from his Sunday outing to the Snowflake Bakery in the Bronx. It was the kind with caraway seeds; do they even make real rye bread anymore, and with caraway seeds?
Why would anyone want to live without bread? The answer is simple. No one wants to have a food sensitivity, especially one that can eat away at your gut. That is exactly what happens to people who have celiac disease. I never would have known if Ellie, a family member, hadn’t been diagnosed with the disease.
Many symptoms of the disease are common to other gastro-intestinal complaints like bloating, weight loss, and stomach pain, but the test for the disease is definitive. The first step is a simple blood test to see if you have a genetic marker for the disease. If it is positive, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have it. The second part is an endoscopy to see if the small intestine has been affected. If you think you or someone in your family, especially a child, might have the disease, I urge you to be tested.
Celiac prevents the body from digesting gluten, and as in any autoimmune disorder, the body’s immune system will attack itself instead of defending against pathogens. In celiac, gluten will trigger the immune system to damage the lining of the small intestine so that nutrients cannot be absorbed and food is unable to be digested, resulting in serious health effects starting with malnutrition. It is estimated that almost three million Americans have celiac and only about 100,000 are aware of it.
Europeans are the most likely group to have the disease, and since Ashkenazi Jews are from Europe, they also have a greater risk.
Because of Ellie, I have learned in the past few years how hard it is to be gluten free and Jewish. When the challah is shared on Shabbat, you must demur, the same with the matzoh at Passover.
There are now hundreds of gluten free cookbooks and websites, but the sad fact remains that bread must have gluten. Like the way it sounds, it is the “glue”that holds the bread together. I recently experimented with making gluten free challah. Yuch! Actually, Ellie liked it; it was so much better than the gluten free bread from the health store. It didn’t taste bad, but the texture was nothing like real challah.
Life becomes a lot harder when you are diagnosed with celiac disease because even a tiny crumb of bread, or a trace of gluten can trigger the symptoms. Since most people don’t understand it, it becomes almost impossible to eat out or at other people’s homes. A slice of gluten free bread cut with the same bread knife, or put in the same toaster as a regular slice will set it off.
There are now restaurants that offer gluten free menus, but, if the owner does not have celiac disease, it is unlikely the people running the place really understand how strict a regimen gluten free demands. They will glibly say something is gluten free when all they mean is that it doesn’t have wheat. Unfortunately many products are manufactured on facilities that also process wheat, and cannot be guaranteed as gluten free.
Happily, Ellie is much better now after being on a strictly gluten free diet for eight years. She has had her children tested because it can be inherited. Her life is much busier with all the cooking she must do. Her social life has suffered, but it’s a small price to pay for being healthy.
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Applebaum is a freelance writer based in San Diego.