being gluten- and lactose-intolerant, eating and drinking and grocery shopping is complicated.

most people don’t understand what gluten is, and so i simplify matters by telling them that i can’t eat wheat or flour. then they sort of blink really slowly and ask me to repeat myself.

but it’s not just wheat. it’s oats and barley and rye and a great big number of other grains that are suspect. gluten is the protein in grains that make the dough springy and spongy, so highly tensile bread products like bagels are basically gluten factories. even when it’s not in bread or bread-products, gluten still gets into everything somehow or other. even corn flakes and soya sauce.

and even though being lactose-intolerant is a much easier concept for people to understand, apart from big coffee chains and/or more upmarket places that cater to a more upmarket crowd, non-dairy milk is hard to come by if i’m thinking of drinking some coffee. furthermore, i’m not too big a fan of soy milk anymore, which makes the hunt for a cup of coffee with rice milk not made by me and which i’d be willing to pay good money for even harder.

it also makes being invited to dinner parties a nightmare, because i have no idea what they’re going to make. pasta? pizza? cous cous? falafel? noodles? gravy? sauce? cake? biscuits? custard? cream? ice cream? and i don’t think it’s polite to refuse food that someone’s cooked for me. and it makes me feel like a twat calling someone up the day before and telling them that i’m gluten- and lactose-intolerant and expect a special meal for myself.

it’s hard enough at my dinner parties to make separate dishes for non-/meat-eating guests and it’s just one ingredient. can you imagine if someone was making pasta in a cream sauce, with a chocolate cake for dessert, for 7 other people and i was the only one who had to eat something else?

anyway, as hard as it is, i’m rather thankful that up till now i’m only still intolerant of gluten and lactose, and not allergic. i won’t die or break out in hives or have a severe physically manifested reaction if i do eat things that contain gluten or lactose. i indulge in ice-cream sometimes, and i eat sandwiches for lunch when there’s nothing else available, and i really love pasta. it also means that whilst i might not be doing the best thing to my body and my hosts toilets, i don’t absolutely have to eat a special meal by myself when i go to dinner parties.

and i’m really lucky to be chinese and have a natural tendency towards the eating of rice and non-creamy things. the things i can do with rice. i eat it steamed, cold, warm, in salads, with other dishes, baked, in soup, as porridge, etc. i can eat rice for all 3 meals in a day.

it’s also probably a good thing that supermarkets are realising the potential (financially) of gluten- and lactose-free foods, and so i can get things like rice spaghetti, rice milk and gluten-free breads and flour quite easily. the organic shop round the corner also has a wide range of things that are gluten-/lactose-free.

but probably the best thing that comes out of all this is the fact that with these special dietary requirements, almost all convenience foods are no longer attractive to me because whilst they may look real pretty on the box, the ingredients list just makes me go ‘eurgh’ at the wheat flour and ‘eurgh’ at the milk and then ‘eeeurgh’ at the nutritional information panel. as a result, out of necessity, i buy lots of fresh ingredients and cook most of my own meals and end up eating pretty healthily incidentally.