Gluten-Free Food: Celiac Disease And Celiac Disease

Many foods we eat contain a common ingredient called gluten. Gluten is a protein that binds ingredients together and gives food its texture. About 1% of the United State’s population has an autoimmune disease called celiac disease. This percentage does not include those who are undiagnosed, wheat sensitive, or misdiagnosed. Celiac disease causes severe symptoms to the person when gluten is ingested. Therefore, the only way to treat it is to maintain a strictly ‘gluten-free’ regime. Maintaining this lifestyle is extremely difficult. Celiac disease is unknown to most of society. Many people do not understand what people who have it go through. Due to the lack of awareness, many people who have celiac disease often struggle with social situations

Although, it can also brings social challenges as well. The availability of strictly gluten free foods have increased dramatically over the last few years. But, a struggle that many people face is the difference in taste in some of the foods. Since these foods don’t contain gluten, it lacks the texture gluten gives it and does not bind as well as foods do with gluten. Foods often taste bland and do not carry the same flavors as expected. Hoyt explains that the foods she tried were “dry, crumbly, tasted like cardboard, and had absolutely no positive nutritional value” (Hoyt 3). To compromise, a person can modify their own recipes or find foods that have always been gluten free. Another “common strategy for maintaining the gluten free diet is reading product ingredients” (Bacigalupe, Plocha 1). In order to be sure that every food that is being consumed does not contain gluten, reading food labels is necessary. Learning how to read labels is crucial to living gluten free. A person has to be conscience of what ingredients they can and cannot have. To name a few; wheat, barley, rye and malt. If not, a person can buy and eat a food that they cannot have, contaminate themselves, and become