Everything Contains Gluten.
I have now been gluten-free for a year, and off-and-on gluten-free for five. This is not something I enjoy, with the exception of feeling substantially better and not being sick all the time.
While I am technically choosing to eat foods without gluten so that I will no longer be sick, I just want to complain about the entire experience. Stop reading now if you don’t want to hear it.
First, everything contains gluten. In America, our diets revolve around bread. We have bagels and biscuits for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and there’s always bread on the table for dinners. I have never much cared for bread, which is good, but the convenience of having, say, a cheeseburger on a bun has always meant a lot to me.
I can no longer get a cheeseburger on a bun. I can get it wrapped in lettuce, which is disastrous to eat, or sitting on a plate which is just dull. Who wants a cheeseburger on a plate? On rare occasions, I have a choice of a gluten-free bun. These taste a little like sand, and they often crumble like sand, too. They are not a suitable substitute for a hearty, glutenous bun.
But – and this is the real kicker – gluten-free buns cost more. I pay an extra $3-10 every single time we eat out, simply because the entire food arena – from grocery stores to restaurants – charges more to provide sub-par substitutes just for the pleasure of eating with my own family. Occasionally I will have the chance to eat gluten-free pizza. Gluten-free pizza crusts often come in only one size, which is – to put it mildly – very small. I can only get one 10″ pizza, which is a little like saying I can have pizza, but most of it is crust.
And OMG that gluten-free crust is bad. Unless someone knows how to cook it – which simply doesn’t happen very often – gluten-free crust comes out mushy and gross. Gluten-free pizza needs to be well-done and crispy or it doesn’t taste like pizza crust at all. And for the pleasure of eating the mush, I get to pay an extra $3-10!
I don’t know who decides that gluten-free stuff should cost more; I really don’t. It’s mostly made out of cheap rice flour – so why are we paying more for rice? Isn’t rice competitively priced with wheat? I read somewhere that we are paying for the gluten-free symbol, that it takes a lot of paperwork and hoo-hah to get that symbol on a package.
Still. Whoever they are…
Do they believe that we should pay more – for a symbol, for rice, for mushy/sandy tasting food? It just doesn’t seem fair. It’s bad enough that cookies, cake, donuts, bread, cereal, fried foods, most soups and even soy sauce are off limits if I want to stay well.
Paying more for less just doesn’t seem right.