Why? You mean why other than the obvious delight of being that person holding up the coffee shop line (as I was this morning) while the barista checks if they can put coffee in a jar, asking “Do you have decaf? And can you make that with almond milk? And is that gluten free? Okay what about that? Ok, is that gluten free? It is! Oh wait, does it have dairy? Okay, no, no don’t worry about it. I’ll just have hot water.
Yes. In my jar.”
I mean, why? Really? Isn’t it obvious?
But for serious, I know that the gluten-free thing is getting sort of trendy, and even starting to annoy people with real gluten intolerances or celiac, (like this woman) but I think most people go gluten free because they see it as having a positive impact on their health.
Many naturopaths advise a gluten/dairy/soy free diet to address auto-immune or inflammatory issues, and in our case it was recommended for our niece, so we jumped aboard for the sake of solidarity, because we do a lot of meals together and I’m always game for adjusting my eating habits to see what affect (if any) it had on my overall health.
The older I get, the more I look at eating as a cause-effect scenario,
It’s not about weight or calories or even trendy-trendy diets, it’s about what makes me feel good physically and emotionally. I don’t look at it as not being “allowed” to eat certain foods, I just pay attention to how I feel after I eat them, and the easiest way to do that is by cutting them out for a period of time, and then reintroducing them and observing their effects.
I did this with diet coke, which I adored in all of its aspartame-laced glory. I never bought it to have at home, but would always order it at restaurants, and telling myself I wasn’t “allowed” to have it always backfired, with me inevitably going WILD and throwing caution to the wind on some rebellious Friday night, saying “ Eff this, world, I’m having a diet coke- consequences be damned!”
It was all sorts of out of control, living on the edge stuff. You know how it is.
And then one day I had a full on Oprah aha-moment and realized that I felt like shit after drinking diet coke. Like, gut-churning, heart-racing, acid-reflux shitty shitty shit. And now I don’t drink it anymore.
Um. I kind of forgot what I was talking about and had to go back and look at the question. SO, we are gluten-free temporarily (or maybe forever) to see if it makes us feel better. As for soy, I think a lot of the concern stems from GMO stuff, but also just that soy has to be processed so much in order to get it to edible status. I think many are advocating eating whole, unprocessed foods: vegetables, fruits, nuts & seeds, healthy oils/fats etc.
(and milkshakes. ahem.)
No Comments