I’m MOSTLY gluten-free. I haven’t taken the Celiac Disease Reflex Screen mostly because I don’t want to deal with eating gluten long enough to take it. By “mostly” gluten free I mean that if there is some soy sauce in a dish I will eat it. My intolerance for wheat, however, is enough that a single bite of a piece of bread will make me feel sick the next day. There is definitely something up with wheat and me.

I was in denial for a while and then later thought that it must be psychosomatic or something. The person who noticed it first was my girlfriend. She noticed that on Saturdays I was usually grumpy and emotional. I started tracking my food intake and my moods and the thing that stood out was wheat. This is bordering on “too much information” but the other thing that changed when I stopped eating wheat was that this horrible acne that I had always had on my back cleared up.

While I still had my mind made up that it was psychosomatic, I would go out to eat at restaurants and be too shy to ask my waiter if something had wheat. But I would order carefully trying to get a dish without wheat and then the next day I would feel awful and a phone call to the restaurant would verify that there was wheat in the dish. Like for instance, gumbo? The roux in gumbo has tons of wheat. Surprise!

Now I end up wondering how many other people might be allergic to wheat. It seems like the numbers are growing. At times I hear information that makes me think it’s a fad. A co-worker commented to me recently that his wife had “thought” she was gluten-intolerant but then had changed her mind. I’ve also heard about people quitting gluten because they figure it’s more healthy. That’s crazy. It’s a real pain staying away from wheat.

Believe me, I would rather have a real donut, sourdough bread, and a real pizza! OK well that’s enough wool-gathering. I’m going to get this blog customized a little and start posting reviews and information.