This post contains affiliate links. See my disclosure for more information.
Five Things to Never Say to Someone Who Has to Eat Gluten-Free Food
Here are five things to never say to someone who has to eat gluten-free food because they have celiac disease or other medical concern that requires them to completely eliminate gluten:
- Oh, you can have just a little! Go on, have a bite. My neighbor’s daughter is gluten-free and she eats this cake once in awhile.
*Your neighbor’s daughter is going to remain sick if she has a medical need to be gluten free. - How much weight have you lost? I work with someone who lost a lot of weight on a gluten-free diet.
*Gluten-Free is NOT a weight loss diet. The opposite is often true. - This is so AWFUL. I don’t know how you do it. I’d die if I couldn’t eat bread/cake/onion rings.
*Gee, thanks. Appreciate your support on a major change in diet that will last my entire lifetime. I also can eat bread, cake, onion rings, just about anything you eat. I just have to make a gluten-free version. - What happens when you eat gluten? What would happen if you ate this fried chicken on my plate?
*For many of us, this isn’t something we want to discuss in a social or meal setting. Vomiting, gastric distress, days of pain and brain fog, a rash, not things we want to talk about across the table. - I heard you can eat anything you want in Europe. They have different wheat there. Followed by ramblings about GMOs, RoundUp, organic food, farming practices they only think they know about…
*This is NOT true, people who cannot eat gluten still can’t eat gluten in Europe. Gluten is gluten is gluten.
Is there anything you would add to the list of things you wish people would not say to someone with celiac disease or a need to eat a strict gluten-free diet? Leave a comment below…
Well you can order a salad right?
Yes I would love a salad at 8am for breakfast thank you. Yes I would love to pay $10 for some iceberg lettuce and a tomato slice at a steak house while you have a New York strip and Au gratin potatoes! Yes I would love to go to a restaurant and only ever get to eat a salad! Or wait until I get home to eat because the fast food restaurant you choose doesn’t even offer salad! And then let’s discuss cross contamination with the croutons!
Yes to ALL of this! I’m vegetarian as well as gluten-free and am SO tired of a salad being the option available to me. I love a good salad but the options are usually exactly as you said, some iceberg situation. Blech.
When presented with something breaded and fried, “Can’t you just take the breading off?”
Yes! I’ve heard that. Here we are avoiding anything prepared in a shared fryer, there’s no way we would just take the breading off!
Oh. That’s just a fad diet. You just need to get over it….
Here have some pizza.
“Are you still doing that gluten-free thing?” Yep, I’ve heard that one, too.
“Why don’t you just” pick the croutons off the salad, scrape off the breading, eat the filling but leave the piecrust….
YES! Before I was gluten-free, I was (and still am) vegetarian. People would say things about “just picking the bacon off” of baked beans or pulling the pepperoni off of pizza. It was challenging enough when it was a dietary choice. Now that I am gluten-free, not by choice but by medical necessity, those comments are particularly challenging.