Gluten free not coeliac

[madcatladyforever]

I have catered for a gluten free family on the run up to new year, gluten free not because they have coliac disease but because they think they are gluten intolerant. It has cost me at least £100 more than my normal shop because all of that free from stuff is expensive and also cost me about 3 hours I don't have in supermarkets scrutinising labels.
Now I have a friend coming for 2 days, along with a whole lot of other people, who is gluten free and dairy free because some non medical quack told her these items should be banned from everybodys diet.
I'm an ex nurse and I'm really sick of all this faddy diet nonsense and I have told her that I cannot cater for special diets as there are too many people coming and please can she bring something she can eat to the buffet.
She has gone off in a major strop and won't talk to me.
AIBU?

I’m not celiac according to tests but gluten gives me the shits and pain. The blood test isnt fool proof.

You don’t need to buy freefrom stuff. Most of it is crap anyway. Stick to dishes everyone can eat with rice or quinoa or potatoes or other root veg.

YABU
if you'd done rice and potato based meals and avoided anything bread and pasta based, I'm sure you could have saved yourself ££

The increase in range is helpful but confusing restaurants, cafes and hotels with demanding gluten-free but not needing free from cross contamination jeopardises food safety for those with medical needs and renders Coeliac's as often considered just another faddy dieters. This! The amount of times I've been places and vomited due to cross contamination. "We didn't realise we had to use a different chopping board/knife/fryer.
I was diagnised with coeliac disease aged 5, I'm 28 so no blood test then, they ended up doing a stomach biopsy and i remember spending those early years constantly very poorly. The hospital thought I had leukemia at one point as I was so ill. So people passing it off as a fad piss me off.

OP it's terribly kind of you to have gone to all that trouble for your guest. However if someone has a genuine allergy/intolerance they should be more than happy to provide their own.

Being gluten intolerant and not being a coeliac has been clinically proven as a medical condition in its own right. You could try feeding my son gluten and watching vomit for the next 12 hours if you want anecdotal evidence or give it to me and see my stomach swell before your eyes and then not be able to get out of bed for a few days from fatigue and joint pain. alternatively I'll try and find the clinical review and post it on here.

Non Caeliac GI is a thing OP 🙄

Oddly enough diagnosed by both my consultant and GP.

[https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=gluten+intolerance+review&oq=gluten+intolera#d=gs_qabs&p=&u=%23p%3Dl_5KS-ZaOWMJ here's one report]

here [[https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=gluten+intolerance+review&oq=gluten+intolera#d=gs_qabs&p=&u=%23p%3Dl_5KS-ZaOWMJ ]]

I know what you mean, OP. There are lots of people around cutting out whole food groups because it is the latest fad. Not people with genuine intolerances but those who think it’ll help them lose weight or ‘be healthier’ (probably because they saw it on buzzfeed or YouTube).

I once had a gluten-free person round and I realised she had eaten something w gluten in it (i had provided plenty of variety of gf and non-gf foods) ) so I said did she realise and when she said ‘yes, but it’ll be ok’ thought wtf? I’m sure she knew they weren’t gf too and just fancied one (was a type of veggie sausage).

3hrs and 100 quid? Bloody hell what did you buy!

I sometimes think people think I'm being awkward. I can't have dairy, soy or eggs not because I'm allergic but because my son in and he's bf.

I would always bring my own food anyway. It's easier when you have to live with it everyday to know what is ok, you're used to checking packets etc. Also this way you can be sure there are no slip ups.

Xmas is a hard time of year. It is easy to feel like you're always missing out. It's very rude of your guest to have reacted like that though.

If you have coeliac DNA, and continue to eat gluten, you are far more likely to trigger coeliac disease at some point. I would not wish it on anyone, especially my kids who have to be GF.

Presumably we need some kind of certificate so you know we're some of the" real" ones.

My feeling is that if it wasn't for the fad, I would find it much harder to source food for the kids that bridges from their old diet to the new.

It sounds like your friend doesn't have a medical condition and just wants to follow a particular diet. If she said she was following the Atkins diet, or a Mediterranean diet, would she expect you to cater just for her?

It is unreasonable to expect your host to cater for things like this with only one day's notice. If the diet is that important to her and is really going to make everyone so healthy, I would imagine that she would be delighted to bring something to the buffet.

If someone's diet is only important enough to inconvenience other people, but not important enough to inconvenience them, then I won't go too much out of my way to cater for them.

In any case, if it is a buffet, I would expect that most people would just find something suitable from the choice on offer. But a lot of things don't have gluten in anyway. When I do a buffet, I usually include baked potatoes, salad or fruit and they can help themselves to those.

Friends we have with coeliac problems always prefer us not to buy free from products because they will be wasted. They prefer to bring the ones they find palatable.

My inlaws had a test done in a local chemist a few years ago. By test I mean somebody held a piece of metal on their big toe and told them they couldn't eat gluten. (they never had any medical problems or reactions before)
Ever since then they have been gluten free in public only.

They seem to love the attention they get from people when eating out and making a big song and dance about needing 'gluten free'.
When at home they have no problem eating KFC, fish and chips, pies full of gluten etc.

They then have the nerve to comment about how they can't stand people on faddy diets.

Whilst I can understand that you think it's difficult if you're not used to a certain style of cooking, the reality is that it's pretty easy to accommodate your friend. The difference is that you don't want to.

I don't like fad diets eithe, I am medically diagnosed as gluten intolerant so it does exist which currently pregnancy is suppressing my symptoms (due to antibody production).
I will always bring along back up food when going to places but your not asking any of your other guests to bring a dish etc so your isolating your friend because you can't be bothered.

As others have said there is no need for it to cost loads of money the only ingredient you would have to buy in specially is stock (but quite a few options and about £1.50)

TBH it sounds more like your in a huff, can't be bothered to look and realise that many things you can make would cater for your friend and not have to be special/seperate (other than a bang in the oven beige buffet platter), so you isolated instead.
If you invited people then you should provide for them so yes I think YABU!

Yes YABU OP, it's not really for you to say whether or not gluten makes someone else ill or not. Medical tests can be inconclusive and lots of people are sensitive to a number of ingredients. I'm not sure the NHS is as well equipped or keen to assist with this stuff as people think as its not life or death and they are rather strained, I can see why people seek help elsewhere when in pain or discomfort. I would be more inclined to feel upset that they were in so much discomfort that there was even a need for them to seek help or cut out food groups, after all its not something you'd do for fun since as you say, it can expensive to buy some things and quite a lot of the labelled gluten free items don't taste anywhere near as nice as their glutened counterparts imo. ( as someone medically diagnosed Coeliac who couldnt get a diagnosis for several years)
Perhaps its the case that they just don't wish to tell you about the explosive diarrhoea and awful stomach cramps they get from eating certain food groups and so you and so hope saying 'I'm gluten intolerant' will suffice. Unless you really know, then why turn it into opportunity to assume and judge, what's the point when it only creates negative feeling.

There's also no need to spend hours looking, surely you can just prepare some of the many gluten free recipes online, or just prepare dishes wish are naturally gluten free of which there are a great many. I don't think asking them if they'd like to being a few bits as well is rude as such but it's really not the big fuss it's being made out to be. If you want to cook -Substitute any milk in cooking for a soy option or coconut milk, use vegan cheese, use gluten free flour. Or just serve seasoned meat/fish/veg which is naturally free of those things. Or just visit the free from counter. Pretty much everything is easily substituted and I don't agree that for a one off meal it needs to be a significant additional spend at all.
Being told how put out you are by something like this just seems a bit rude and petty so I can see why your friend is offended. I'd not want to come tbh, your own friends not taking you seriously and acting like you're a hypochondriac and a chancer is hardly endearing or a portent of a good night out. When you have an intolerance, eating out or at others houses is anxiety inducing as it is, nobody wants to be ill for days.

I'd always accommodate a dietary preference or allergy because the brief Google it takes to source an achievable affordable option is so simple and I wouldn't want anyone to feel judged. It just always seem to be more about grandstanding disapproval based on assumption in these situations than anything else, which is pretty unpleasant.

Oh god, it’s really not that hard to cook gluten free, just do it and stop being so stroppy. She’s supposed to be a friend for goodness sake!

I can see how it’s annoying and inconvenient to have special dietary requirements sprung on you at the last minute - but surely it’d be possible to offer her something simple and relatively inexpensive like eggs for breakfast and jacket potatoes for main meals as an alternative to what you’ve planned?

Coeliac in the family. GF catering isn't that hard or expensive (especially for a limited amount of time) if you cook from scratch.

Only bread, which is £3.50 for a loaf that tastes halfway decent.

The rest you can just avoid. Base meals n rice & potatoes, not pasta.

GF Roast is easy to pull off.

She said she was catering for a GF family in the run up to New Year. That sounds to me like several people for multiple meals. In which case the £100 is easily explained.

And I definitely think that if someone is coming to stay for 2 days, it's reasonable to ask them to e.g. bring their preferred GF breakfast cereal and so on. Yes, you can serve meat and veg for dinner. But if lunch and breakfast would normally be bread-based, it makes it a lot easier for people to bring stuff. Especially if you've got a lot of people to cater for, not just the gf person. And especially if you're told at short notice. OP, I think you're being perfectly reasonable.

Gosh, people suck.

It isn't rocket science to realise that coeliacs and having a Gluten intolerance are two separate things and can exist independent of one another.

If I eat gluten at certain times, I'm bedridden for weeks. I'm not a coeliac.

It's people like this who minimize health issues that make it so difficult for people with things like mental illness and invisible disabilities. Very sad

Oh dear!

It's fairly obvious that the OP is NOT bemoaning people with real issues.

It is also obvious that she has no personal experience of diet issues and so, to be sure, has gone out of her way to buy things she can rely on, rather than spending hours researching foods and possibly still making an error that would cause very real issues.

And it is really obvious that the last straw for her is a friends who doesn't have any issues, just likes to be fussy and always on another faddy diet. She did after all take time, money and effort for the friends with health issues. After which the Faddy Friends just seemed a step too far.

Leaping on OP because YOU have an issue won't change the fact that the friend she refused to accommodate is just a fussy fucker!

But how is op certain her friend is just fussy rather then reaching to gluten?