My 6-year-old daughter can’t eat pizza — and she reminds me of this every single day. We live in the friggin’ pizza capital of the United States, and she can’t have a single bite. And that’s because she has Celiac disease, which means no gluten, so, no wheat.
I know, I know, I hear it all the time: ”But she can have cauliflower pizza crust.” Yes, she can! But let’s be real here — cauliflower, or, as my daughter calls it, cardboard pizza, tastes dry, bland, and well… cardboardy. There’s just nothing like that soft gluten-filled pizza dough melting in your mouth.
My daughter got diagnosed in with Celiac disease in 2018
She has an actual, medical diagnosis — we’re not a family that walks around pretending our child has Celiac, which, trust me, lots of people do. Since then, living with Celiac has been a personal hell for my daughter, and quite frankly, all of us.
I’ve tried being creative to help my daughter feel better about her diagnosis. When a group of my her friends, pre-pandemic, wanted McDonald’s after a playdate, I raced to the amazing Bareburger, which has gluten-free kids meals, and put the Bareburger in a Happy Meal bag so my daughter wouldn’t feel left out. We’ve found some GF dessert and muffin mixes she likes (all sold out during the height of the pandemic, of course) but again, parties, outings, school events, or any social events with food are a constant struggle for us.
According to Time, around 1% of the population has an actual Celiac diagnosis — that’s not a huge demographic of people. So how come it seems like so many people in our social circles have Celiac?
Here’s my opinion: They don’t
They’re gluten intolerant. They don’t actually want to be scoped medically which requires being put under anesthesia while a gastroenterologist scrapes and photographs your intestines and tests the villi inside for Celiac, along with tons of bloodwork, or just feel better when they don’t eat gluten.
I get all that. I swear, I do. I’ve heard many people insist their skin cleared up or they could sleep better once they went gluten-free, and that’s great.
But please don’t tell people you have Celiac when you don’t
Again, Celiac is a DISEASE, and if left undiagnosed can lead to infertility. It’s not something to casually say you have just because eating gluten sometimes makes you tired and bloated. Because so many people claim they have Celiac when they don’t, the disease is often mocked or not taken seriously by others.
Celiac isn’t something to pretend you have just because you don’t want to eat carbs. We couldn’t find any gluten-free foods during the height of the pandemic — even online — and I was really annoyed about this.
I have a feeling people with no official diagnosis didn’t give a hoot and decided to buy out every GF item from Aldi or Peapod because it was better than nothing during lockdown. That’s nice for YOU, but what about people like my kid who really needed that gluten-free food, when you, person without any official medical diagnosis, decided to stock up on it?
So in case you still didn't know, Celiac is real and something my daughter has to live with forever. It’s not an allergy, it’s not a diet, it doesn’t go away (that's a total myth), it’s not a trendy lifestyle I imposed on her, and it’s not something you joke you have because you want to lose weight.
While I never expected my second grader to search for the words "Contains Wheat" on all food labels, what I do expect is for people to continue to support her, and us as a family, when we say she’s gluten-free and take her illness seriously. Oh, and leave those GF items on the shelf for those of us who really need them, ok?
