CURIOUS THINGS is the column from Donnybrook-Bridgetown Mail journalist Nina Smith.
Nina has been a journalist for six years in the apple town of Donnybrook.
Outside of work her obsessions are writing novels, creating costumes, belly dancing and seeking out the weird, the strange and the curious as inspiration for stories.
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Consuming bread and milk, for me, would be a bit like sprinkling rat poison on my cereal.
Bread and milk, right? That’s probably what you have for breakfast.
Not that high on the deadly poison list.
Welcome to my world. I am gluten sensitive, lactose intolerant and caffeine sensitive. The list is longer, but I won’t bore you.
Gluten is my mortal enemy, and it lurks everywhere I go.
Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I've got my diet figured out.
I just haven’t quite discovered how to navigate the labyrinthine social challenges it entails.
Recently it was celiac awareness week, and that got me thinking about this whole thing.
There is a difference, of course, between celiac and gluten sensitivity, but the two conditions come down to the same thing: a strict gluten (and for me coffee, and dairy, etc etc) free diet, resulting in severe social awkwardness.
Like when someone offers you a coffee. You politely refuse.
They get this look in their eye. Disbelief. Suspicion. Are you being rude?
Do you not like their coffee? Are you antisocial, or do you belong to some odd non-coffee drinking sect to which you’re about to try and convert them?
No, no, you say. I’m caffeine sensitive. I’d love a glass of water.
Well, alright. The suspicion recedes. Then they ask if you’d like a piece of cake. Or a biscuit.
And the whole process repeats itself until you repeat the words you've said so many times you feel like a broken record.
I’m gluten sensitive, love – just the water will be fine.
Don’t get me started on eating out. A lot of places are great, and will offer at least a couple of gluten free options, but I have on occasion been informed in icy tones, on requesting a gluten free option, that “we don’t do that kind of thing.”
I've encountered a few different responses to the idea of not being able to eat bread and biscuits.
Some people are quite shocked at the idea. What else is there to eat?
Or there is a shrug of indifference that signals a fellow sufferer. Here love, have a grape.
There are a lot of us around these days, a fact evidenced by the growing industry of gluten free food.
You can meet all the gluten sensitive people lurking in the gluten free aisle at the supermarket, gazing at the array of shiny, shiny gluten free food alternatives, all at half the size and twice the price.
They have gluten free chocolate there. Chocolate. I tried some. It still made me ill.
So nowadays I just stick to the pasta and the gluten free cornflour, and ignore the rest of the shiny gluten free things as fiercely as I ignore most of the rest of the supermarket.
Gluten sensitivity is a widespread and rapidly growing condition.
Whether this is because the human body is just not built to handle processed flour, or because we are all genetically broken, or because aliens are trying to take over the Earth by toppling the monolithic bread industry, I neither know nor really care.
I’m fine with it. Honest. So if you don’t mind, I’m just going to sit back now, have a glass of water and a grape and find some smugly healthy raw food advocates on Facebook to make friends with.
Because ultimately – as I will tell myself next time I hurry past the forbidden chocolate and biscuit aisles – people weren't meant to digest gluten anyway.
What do you think? Do your food allergies leave you in awkward social situations? Post your comments below.
