- Sarah Hayes
GLUTEN LITERALLY MEANS “glue” in Latin. Put simply, it’s the group of proteins that make dough so doughy. It’s in wheat, barley, rye, and spelt. It’s in pizza, bagels, and doughnuts.
It’s 2008. I’m 16 years old, and I’ve just been told I have celiac disease—a diagnosis that explains a small goiter and a lifetime of inexplicable gastrointestinal distress. Currently, the only reliable treatment for celiac disease is a permanent gluten-free diet.
The next day I make my first foray into the then-nascent world of gluten-free food, when I buy a pastry from a vendor outside of the Trader Joe’s on NW 21st, right next to my high school. It’s a $6 cheese roll that crumbles in my hands and tastes distinctly like Johnson & Johnson No More Tears baby shampoo, and goes down like the first dose of a new medication. My first girlfriend’s older brother calls me a “pussy” for not eating lasagna. I am resigned to the fact that I will never be able to enjoy pizza, bagels, or doughnuts for the rest of my life without experiencing a sensation that could best be described as “phantom appendicitis,” and occasionally escalates into an extended cut of that one scene from Dumb and Dumber.
And you know what? Sometimes it’s fucking worth it.
But now it’s 2016, and the world is on my side. Studies report that approximately three million people in the United States currently suffer from celiac disease—a disorder in which gluten causes an inflammatory autoimmune response in the small intestine. It’s reported that six times that amount suffer from some type of gluten sensitivity.
Within the last few years, the “gluten-free lifestyle” has become a bandwagon diet and received national coverage, with Portland as one of its vanguard cities.