I'm serious. You can't open a dead-tree newspaper these days without seeing a gushing article about a bored soccer mom who opened up a suburban g/f cupcake bakery or launched a line of sugared-and-iced cutout cookies made from styrofoam and sticking plaster. Yes, she cured her angel's ADD by withdrawing wheat flour and now she wants to share the Good News with the rest of world!
Big Bad Agribusiness is hopping on the g/f bandwagon, too, with everybody from Duncan Hines to Aunt Jemima offering cereal-free versions of their convenience mixes. And more than one hand-wringing editorial piece has bewailed the fact that many companies, hoping to profit from desperate parents' desire to cure their kids' complaints (both real and imagined, I suspect), have started labelling their products gluten-free and upping the price, even though said cans and packages never had any gluten in them to begin with.
It is all very worrying. If everybody suddenly goes gluten-free, what will happen to my treasured status as an eccentric go-it-alone, hewing to my g/f diet in the face of insurmountable adversity and an uncaring world? I mean, if it suddenly turns out that being gluten-free is as simple as going to the supermarket and stocking up on a trolleyful of easy-to-find wheatless goodies, where's the challenge? How will I be able to indulge in my two favorite pastimes, complaining and whining?
Fearing for my status as an ahead-of-the-curve gluten guerrilla nonpareil, I decided to do some research immediately to find out whether things were really as bad (or do I mean as good?) as they seemed.
I had an hour to spare while the Kid Squid was at his flying lesson, so I parked myself on a park bench by the runway, iPad and Mme. Malaprop close at hand. It could have been very pleasant sitting there, enjoying the shade of a big tree and the first cool day in weeks, watching the planes taking on and off while making use of the airport's free wireless network - but I had more serious things on my mind.
I logged onto my local supermarket's web site and tapped 'gluten-free' into its search engine. Hey presto - over sixteen hundred items! I had no idea I had access to so many comestibles sans wheat, rye and barley. Of course, my supermarket has been known to hide gluten-polluted items in the so-called gluten-free aisle, so I knew some seriously skeptical scrutiny of the list was in order. Fortunately, the site's clever designers had included beaucoup nutritional info and quite a lot of shilling for the manufacturers in question, so I was able to do a fair amount of investigating and comparison shopping as I sat listening to the roaring of birds and the chirping of jet engines.
I quickly discovered that the roster of my supermarket's offerings broke down into many of the same categories already identified by the liberal media.
Food that never had any gluten in it, for crying out loud. Campers, you will be relieved to know that solid white albacore tuna in water; salted butter; cans of garbanzo beans; apple juice; parmesan cheese; all-natural turkey breast; organic milk; apple juice; bacon; and brussels sprouts are all gluten-free. Thank the gods - worry about the gluten content of my brussels sprouts had previously been keeping up at night.
Questionable processed food that might be perceived as containing gluten but that I have learned from bitter experience is not labeled by any protocol known to man or beast. I don't usually buy most of these things and not just because I can't make sense of the labels. 'Memphis' barbecue sauce; mayonnaise; baked beans; mild Italian sausage links; and cans of cream of mushroom soup are all deemed safe by The Powers That Be. By clarifying these items' status, I am forced to confess that an important public service has been carried out. If you can believe the internet. Which I never do.
Products I have never heard of and don't know what the heck they are. 'Cran-Max herbal/vegetarian capsules.' The mind boggles. However, I do not appear to be alone in my stupefaction: when the list is sorted by popularity, these mysterious Matrix pills show up almost dead last, although before 'French maritime pine bark extract'. What that tells us about the dietary priorities of the Lehigh Valley's health food nuts I leave for readers braver than myself to consider.
Then we get to the fun stuff - Gluten-Free Products That Are Pretending To Be Something Else - easily my most favorite category.
Sure enough, the big name brands are now muscling in on territory previously held by a few companies earnestly banging the gluten-free (and organic, and often vegan) drum. Yes, the good people at Betty Crocker now make g/f cake mixes - at only three times the cost of their wheat-flour based ones! As an added bonus, in their products' description they tout the importance of a gluten-free diet for children's 'well-being'. I have no words.
Cookies are a common area of gluten-free experimentation and the site was full of crazy substitutes, some of which I have seen and some that I avoid by making a detour through the family-sized-jumbo-bottles-of-cream-soda-and-celery-tonic aisle. All sophisticated foodies are familiar with Black & White cookies, those NYC delicacies consisting of yin & yang chocolate and vanilla fondant atop a soft, spongy cookie (you know the one - it's almost exactly the texture of a Jaffa cake). Well, you can pick up g/f versions under the banner Cookies? I Disagree! Now, a true Black & White cookie is yielding and elastic, dimpling under the pressure of a thoughtfully-applied index finger. The Disagrees are hard, thick hockey pucks that clang against their metal shelving but refuse to shatter no matter how much force one applies to one's swing. I have never even been tempted to taste one. They are the color of sawdust and I have no doubt that is their dominant flavour as well.
There are also gluten-free Oreo-like wonders, with only 32% more calories than the standard sandwich cookies they seek to emulate. Something called Brownie Bites caught my eye because for some inexplicable reason they contain whole soybeans - and organic soybeans, at that. Fruit-flavored g/f breakfast bars were notable for containing absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever within their packing-excelsior-like pastry (I am projecting, here, about the pastry's characteristics, since I've never eaten one - but I'll bet a whole box of $4 g/f cake mix I'm right). That's right - zero vitamins or minerals, although they do boast 11 grams of sugar and 2 grams of fat. Oh well, that's one way to get started in the morning!
Frozen food is another area where the g/f imperative is having a real impact. Let's see, what delicacies await in the further reaches of my virtual supermarket? Pizza (36% of your daily recommended sodium!); fettucini alfredo (35% of your daily saturated fat allowance!); carrot cake and blueberry muffins (no doubt loaded with sugar to cover up the awful metallicism of the bean flour used to boost the protein content of g/f flour blends, with predictably tooth-tingling results); and chicken and cheese burritos (oh, those last ones don't look too bad, actually - they appear to be made from corn tortillas, which - if not strictly autenticos - at least makes sense).
But I have saved the best for last, a product that I feel confident is right up there with Gluten-Free Screams; The Bread That Wasn't; The Cocoa and Cayenne Panic; and We'll Sees. I refer, of course, to OMG Tapioca Dinner Rolls - each of which contains 150 calories and 11% of your daily fat requirement. They contain, among other things, methylcellulose, tapioca syrup, guar gum, glucono delta lactone (huh?) and - wait for it - bamboo fiber! But that's not even the best part. No, the piece de resistance is the warning thoughtfully provided by the manufacturers at the bottom of their product blurb:
If toasting, use caution when removing from toaster.
Do not leave toasting appliance
unattended due to possible risk of fire.
Are they saying that gluten-free dinner rolls are more combustible than the traditional variety? Is all that methylcellulose and bamboo fiber likely to burst spontaneously into flames, bringing down my kitchen cabinetry in a roaring inferno of self-righteous indignation?
Sure sounds like it!
I am relieved to conclude that my bitching and moaning days are far from over.
**
Breaking Top Chef related news: tomorrow I will be dining at 10 Arts, lair of Jen Carroll, the imploding Ripertian protegee of Season 6 and All-Stars fame. This is an ironic turn of events, as my culinary hijinks at Philadelphia's Ritz Carlton will preclude my timely commentary on the Top Chef Masters finale. Watch this space for details of my meal a chez Not-Quite-Eric and Bravo's nail-biting culinary denouement.
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