Fifth Columnists

Christmas preparations are in full swing a chez Fractured Amy. The stockings have been hung from the chimney with care; the house has been festooned with pine branches and holly sprigs; and Sir has done his usual sterling job of bedecking the gazebo in the woods with twinkly white fairy lights. The Messiah can be heard more or less round the clock (except when interrupted by carol services from Wells Cathedral) and the Kid Squid leaps from his bed every morning to see what new delight may be found in his personally-prepared advent calendar.

Since this is my favorite time of the year, it has proved somewhat difficult of late to work myself into my customary lather of gluten-free indignation. It's not easy to snipe and snark when one is cheerfully humming Good King Wenceslas and Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming, as is my wont once December 1 rolls around.

Still, today is a terribly rainy Tuesday, which means I must rouse myself from contented satisfaction to indulge in some well-deserved testiness prompted by Things To Which I Take Exception.

What is the object of my current ire, you may well ask? Well, I will tell you. Today's travails and tribulations come to me courtesy of The New York Times, a publication that in my humble - but generally agreed-upon opinion - is typically above reproach. The specific source of my torment is a feature from last Sunday's magazine section headlined Beat the Wheat. This unfortunate choice of titular phraseology alerted me to the likelihood of anger-causing content such that I only just got round to studying it today. My particularly good mood of late has caused me to avoid strenuously potential buzz-harshers.

The piece turned out to be a bit of puffery about how General Mills, ConAgra, Anheuser-Busch and other stalwarts of the gluten-industrial complex have discovered that beaucoup dosh can be obtained by benevolently shilling wheat-free convenience food to perplexed passengers on the gluten-free bandwagon.

A few interesting factoids emerged during my perusal:

• for reasons unknown to science, young people today are nearly five times as likely to have celiac disease as they were in 1950. Not to be diagnosed with it, mind you - which would be understandable - but actually to have it.
• celiac disease is now appearing in countries with little history of the disorder, including Mexico and India
• the gluten-free market is up by 33 percent since 2009 and is now something like a $6.3 billion industry (this according to Spins, a market research and consulting firm for natural-product producers)
• 80% of that market is driven by core commando consumers - that is, individuals who must avoid gluten because their quacks have told them to. The article is silent on who the other 20% are, but we know, don't we? It's the crazies who think gluten-free diets will help their candidates win elections and inspire the world's remaining dictators to embrace democracy.

This much I already knew: the evil minions of agribusiness are determined to unload (at exorbitant prices) certified maltodextrin-free breakfast cereal on unhappy gluten-freedom fighters who clearly don't take as much joy from plain organic super-yogurt, chia seeds, and homemade preserves as I do.

But here's something that came as a shock to my already-delicate system: there are entire battalions of g/f guerrillas colluding with the enemy!

That's right. Infiltrating our cadres are traitors to the cause who in their spare time are advising the Sinister Forces of Food Processing as to the best ways of luring freedom fighters over to the dark side.

The example cited by the article was The Casserole Coup, which was sneakily perpetrated recently by a consulting board of (I'm sure otherwise blameless) gluten-free do-gooders.

The problem with which the quislings confronted their handlers was the impossibility of creating a one-dish wonder from Progresso gluten-free cream of mushroom soup, which (according to informants) is neither sufficiently 'gelatinous' nor 'gluey' for the production of 'a great casserole'. General Mills have seized upon the opportunity and are now working overtime to engineer a can of condensed g/f soup that will work as well (or as badly) as its mucilaginous counterpart.

Just for fun, I looked up the nutritional info on said product. I discovered that over half its calories come from fat (and that's before you add all your other delicious casserole ingredients) and that one cup gives you 37% of your daily sodium requirement. The casserole-defying gluten-free version has similar characteristics, with the added bonus of a healthy dose of modified food starch (appearing on the label near the top, just after soybean oil).

After receiving this intelligence hyperventilation caused me to fall off my computer chair, rendering further research impractical.

Is this really an improvement? Is there not a better way? Of course there is. We can be thoughtful about what we eat and the ingredients with which we cook. We can decide that convenience does not out-trump quality and accept that we alone - and not profiteers from the wheat wars - must be responsible for what we put on our own tables. And we must bring these misguided wheat-free warriors back into the fold.

But such revolutionary fervor will have to wait until January.

At this time of year, my righteous indignation never lasts for long.