Waiter, Please Hold the Wheat

The longer a person suffers, the more physical problems he or she is likely to develop—which is why it's good to get tested early if you have symptoms or if the disease runs in your family. Diagnosis is easy, if only doctors think to test for the ailment. In 2000, a blood test for the antibody became available. A positive test is usually followed up with a small-bowel biopsy to confirm the results, before patients are put on a strict diet for life. But there are worse fates than going gluten-free. "If God came down and said to me, 'You have to have a chronic disease,' I would pick celiac," says Dr. Ritu Verma, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, who has two children of her own with the disease. Patients don't have to undergo complicated surgeries or toxic treatments to be healed. All they have to do is eliminate wheat, rye and barley from their diets.

Not that the regimen is easy at first. Verma recalls feeling overwhelmed when her children were diagnosed in 2004. Wheat can lurk in a lot of unlikely places, from licorice and soy sauce to soups and gravies. Even blue cheese can have it, as the mold is generally grown on bread, then injected into the cheese as it ages. Mere traces of gluten can cause problems. "That means you need to ask when you order french fries in a restaurant whether the oil was also used to fry chicken nuggets," Verma says.

But living gluten-free has never been easier. In seven years the number of gluten-free products on the market has doubled, according to a recent presentation at the Institute of Food Technologists. These range from Bell & Evans's gluten-free chicken nuggets to Redbridge beer, which is made from sorghum instead of malted barley. Supermarkets like Whole Foods and Wegmans sell gluten-free breads and cookies. And certain restaurant chains, like Outback Steakhouse and Carrabba's Italian Grill, offer gluten-free menus.

Some high-end restaurants are developing gluten-free options, too. On a recent evening, CNN anchor Heidi Collins, the celebrity spokesperson for the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness, dined with Kelly Courson, one of the Celiac Chicks bloggers, at Bistango in New York. The fare ranged from bruschetta on gluten-free bread to a garlicky, gluten-free fusilli with sun-dried tomatoes, chicken and broccoli. "It's exciting to go to a restaurant and be able to eat what you want—not just plain chicken but bread, pasta and dessert, too," says Courson. "We're not wallowing in 'poor me'."

Certainly that's true of Shauna James Ahern, author of the forthcoming book "Gluten-Free Girl," a delightful memoir of learning to eat superbly while remaining gluten-free. On a recent vacation in the Pacific Northwest, she and her husband dined on fresh-caught crab and blackberries fresh off the bush, which they made into a gluten-free crisp, substituting almond meal, tapioca flour, quinoa flakes and cornmeal for regular flour. "When there's this much bounty, it would be a sacrilege to say my life isn't good because I can't eat bread," she says. She's clearly not suffering. Just call her a wheat watcher.

© 2007