Concentrated evil?

In at least one way, I was much better off five years ago than I am today.

Five years ago, I’d never heard the word “gluten.”

Certainly it doth not well become the mouth. Say it with me:

“Gluten.”

It’s Latin for “glue”, and sounds like it. Certainly it doesn’t sound like anything I’d want to eat. But eat it I do, and so do you, in forkfuls and fistfuls, in loaf and linguini, by the can, bottle, or on tap. And knowing that has marginally decreased my ability to take pleasure in life’s most necessary pleasure.

When I see something, anything, labeled “gluten-free” my highly suspicious middle temporal gyrus interprets the message as “flavor-free”, or sometimes “satisfaction-free”, and always “interest-free.” By long and painful experience, my finely calibrated taste buds have become convinced that any manner of foodstuff rendered “free” of anything is a giant culinary step down from the same edible composed the way 300 generations of painstaking gastronomic development intended.

Ominous signs

There’s a reason Haiti was once the richest colonial possession in the world – sugar tastes good. Do you really think Napoleon would have diverted three seasoned infantry divisions from his war against the English to protect France’s lucrative Splenda plantations? Likewise, salt is the soul of savory, and without savory there is only brute and bland substance. Did you ever taste salt-free butter? You might as well spread Crisco on your low-carb toast. And I can say with considerable authority that nothing with less fat tastes better than anything with more of it.

I know what you’re thinking.

“If you hate gluten-free food so much, don’t eat any.”

If only it were that simple. The gluten-free fad is a juggernaut consuming everything in its path. To be sure, gluten-deprived foods will never completely replace the endowed kind, but at the rate they’re expanding it’s a dead certainty that I will at some point be fed it without foreknowledge or forewarning, and an otherwise perfectly good meal will be thereby diminished.

Thing is, there’s a large and growing class of people who equate “-free” with “healthy”, as if the mere act of removing something from food makes it somehow superior. I suppose it’s inevitable that one day soon a savvy manufacturer of cardboard products will come out with a line of energy bars, or snack cakes, or artisan loaves, label them “nutrient-free” and within six months become the wealthiest industrialist in the Western Hemisphere. Millions of solid and sober Americans will buy nutrient-free victuals to the exclusion of all others, and they will foist them upon their children, and their friends, and they’ll throw nutrient-free dinner parties for the single purpose of showing off their nutrient-free lifestyle. “Frankly, I think it tastes better than food with nutrients in it,” they’ll smugly smirk, “and I have so much more energy now that I’ve finally cut nutrients out of my diet.”

‘Artie’ to his friends

But please understand – yes, I am very much opposed to gluten-free grub, but no, I’m not a monster. I am familiar with, and sympathetic to, those suffering from celiac disease, a condition first described in the first century A.D. by Aretaeus of Cappadocia. He called it “koiliakos”, from the Greek word “koelia”, meaning “abdomen”, and described sufferers of “Koeliac Affection” thusly:

“If the stomach be irretentive of the food, and if it pass through undigested and crude, and nothing ascends into the body, we call such persons koeliacs.”

It would be nearly 2,000 years before a Dutch physician pinned the intestinal crime on gluten, and another 60 before food manufacturers discovered a way to turn it into even bigger profits.

In simplest terms, celiac disease is an autoimmune condition that results in inflammation of the lining of the small intestine and can lead to a host of digestive and evacuative complaints up to and including malnutrition. It’s triggered by gluten, which is most commonly present in wheat, barley and rye.

According to the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center, about 1 in 133 Americans – less than one percent – are so afflicted, and yet as much as 6 percent deem themselves bullied by gluten, and up to 15 percent are regular consumers of gluten-free products. The reason for that may lie in the recent discovery of the lesser related condition of “gluten sensitivity,” which ailment has been gaining popularity at an astonishing rate, almost certainly thanks in part to its endorsement by beautiful people like Gwyneth Paltrow and Victoria Beckham. However, and with all due respect to the lovely Gwyneth, who could no doubt play the role of a doctor or nutritionist most convincingly, gluten sensitivity is a condition still looking for a diagnosis.

Modern mythology

While celiac disease is quickly recognized and easily confirmed by empirical testing, gluten sensitivity is neither. As yet, there exists no way to definitively prove, or disprove, that ill-defined scourge. In fact, according to an essay recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, many people “may experience symptoms when they eat foods containing gluten simply because they believe these foods will make them sick.” Conversely, they may just as easily experience a cessation of symptoms after going gluten-free because they believe their chic new diet can only make them feel better. More clinical research, plus a dose of common sense is needed “to prevent a gluten preoccupation from evolving into the conviction that gluten is toxic for most of the population.”

Then again, nobody ever went broke by underestimating the American capacity for common sense.

Even so, most experts agree that gluten sensitivity is, to some extent, a genuine disorder, and common sense amply backs up that assessment. Students of agriculture will tell you that wheat, barley and rye are grains. Students of history will tell you that for nearly all the long ages of human evolution our furry and fur-clad ancestors subsisted principally on non-glutenous substances like nuts, berries, the occasional auroch and, as circumstances warranted, each other. Fact is, people didn’t start eating grains in meaningful quantities until about 9,000 years ago – a very small tick of the evolutionary clock – and staple grains like wheat and barley didn’t arrive in Europe until the 5^th century A. D., which means your Schultzes, Archambaults and O’Learys have had a paltry 1,800 years to adjust to the new dietary regimen. It’s only natural that some modern physiologies continue to resist the change, and, statistically, modern persons of Northern European descent are up to 30 percent more likely to get on the wrong side of celiac disease.

It’s what was for dinner

Compounding matters is compounding gluten. Turns out the Great Satan Gluten, a humble protein, is also much beloved by those who eat. Chemically, gluten is utterly benign toward all but the most tender digestive apparatus, and, when used as directed, acts as a natural adhesive that gives bread its elasticity and helps it keep its shape. Gluten is what makes Wonder Bread wondrous. It makes loaves fluffier, bagels stretchier, cinnamon rolls chewier, and gluten is what makes it possible for artisan breads to be sculpted in a dizzying multiplicity of unlikely shapes and textures.

About ten minutes after that magical moment in the 1950s when those mouth-watering properties were ascribed to gluten, American agronomists went on a major – and majorly successful – campaign to boost the gluten content of the nation’s wheat stocks.  These days, nearly every wheat crop in the country derives from those dramatically enhanced strains, and bowels already groaning under the gluten present in wheat’s original internal organization can hardly be expected to approve of the new regime. 

The staff of strife

But perhaps you’re misunderstanding me again. You should really try harder to understand me. I do not condemn gluten. Nay, I celebrate it. I’ve never been much for breads and cereals to begin with, and as far as I’m concerned the gluten explosion is solely responsible for making even the finest brioche, boule or baguette worth a single moment of my valuable mouth-time. And, as I think I’ve made abundantly clear, gluten’s growing number of detractors are, in the main, a pack of hyper-impressionable bed-wetters who would swear off vegetables if they read in People magazine that George Clooney sent back a plate of grilled asparagus while dining with friends at Connie and Ted’s.

They were a little mushy

 My problem with gluten is that I know what it is, and that it’s in my food. And that kind of dietary consciousness is simply foreign to my nature. I don’t need to know what’s in my hot dog to love it, but once the simpering masses start tampering with the recipe I am compelled to unwanted awareness and must take inconvenient pains to ensure I’m getting the essential salts, sugars, fats and gluten necessary to a happy diet.

I will never purchase a gluten free product, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be subjected to one. Witness the relentless gastronomical intrusions of the meatless mob.

As sure as the sun will rise, some ostensible friend will invite me to supper, and I’ll only find out too late that it’s gluten free repast, and they’ll spend the greater portion of the meal describing in self-satisfied detail the great lengths they went to in discovering the recipes and procuring the ingredients for those tasteless dishes, and how critical it is to my continued survival that I follow their good example, and they will insist on writing down their recipe for those gawd-awful gluten-free sesame rolls, and won’t stop hounding me until I promise to make them at home the first chance I get, and I’ll leave with a knot in my stomach and the conviction that gluten-inspired gas, bloating, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and constipation couldn’t possibly be worse than the ordeal I’d just undergone.

And it’s only a matter of time until I unwittingly find myself seated in a restaurant next to someone who reveals themselves to be on the gluten-free-wagon, and they’ll ask the waiter about gluten-free choices, and scowl disapprovingly at the relatively few gluten-free menu options, and sigh deeply, and order something they say they don’t really want but are willing to settle for because they “don’t want to make a fuss”, and it will be a special-order requiring an inordinate amount of fuss for the kitchen crew, and when it arrives they’ll wolf it down like it was their last meal, all the while picking off every other plate at the table and loudly extolling the virtues of some other restaurant they like much better that offers a wide variety of super-delicious gluten-free dishes, and I will go home with a mild headache and a bad attitude and ache with longing for the innocent ignorance I’d taken so much for granted just five years before.

And maybe, in my secret heart, and despite its fine and useful properties, my real beef with gluten is that I hate what it does to people.

Mostly me.