Gluten Free Month: The Biggest Farce of the Decade

September has been dubbed 'Gluten-Free Month!' Do you even know what gluten is? Most people don’t, so before I start the rant about all the morons who ask me if pickles and lettuce have gluten in them, here is a dictionary definition:

Gluten: NOUN! A substance present in cereal grains, especially wheat, that is responsible for the elastic texture of dough. A mixture of two proteins, it causes illness in people who have celiac disease. (And people who have a wheat/grain allergy)

A year or two ago, all the people (usually overweight people and moms who like to shame other moms who choose not to breastfeed) who relentlessly asked me if random products contained pomegranate or acai berries in them started asking me if random products were gluten free. (“Do these apples contain gluten?”) I would always follow their questions with “Do you have celiac disease or a wheat allergy?” 9 out of 10 times they would say no, so I asked them why they needed something to be gluten free. They always answered with:

“My doctor told me to stop eating gluten and I’ve been losing weight! Or for the stay at home slave moms: Gluten causes autism/ADHD/donkey ears.”

Now, your weight loss couldn’t be possibly attributed to the fact that you now pay attention to what you stuff in your pie hole, would it? Instead of a bag of potato chips you now eat a bag of rice cakes and/or carrot chips? Were you aware that potato chips don’t have gluten either you fat fuck? I usually think they’re full of shit anyway. “I’ve already lost 4 pounds!” Well, lady, my anorexic ass can lose 4 pounds too, and I can eat all the gluten I want in the process. (Okay maybe not all the gluten I want. But I can have bread in the morning and not eat all day and drink nothing but gatorade. 4 pounds? See ya later. Maybe tomorrow night even you 4 fluctuating bastard pounds.)

And for all you moms who are trying to be gluten free because you think your child will get ADHD or autism, hear me out. Your kid is fucking four. He’s going to be doing A LOT of weird shit and its not because he was 'eating gluten’. He’s not sitting still at preschool? Well, he is four. A few decades ago it was the norm for 4 year olds to be tearing around outdoors or indoors, but you insist because he doesn’t feel like sitting through a 45 minute dinner where you and daddy talk about finances, he MUST have ADHD. And don’t even get me started on the whole autism craze. Your kid can’t socialize? I’m sure it’s not because he was raised in some closed off environment where mom referred to herself in the third person in a baby voice all the time. “Mommy needs a latte so it's time for Philip to go sleepy sleeps.” (These are the same people who failed miserably to teach their kid any manners.)

Gluten isn’t bad for you. Its not fantastic for you either. Its just kind of there, like a lot of things in this world. (Mayors, internet, pickles, Greenland) It probably causes cancer, like everything else does, too. 

If a doctor tells you to go gluten free, ask them why. If the answer is anything but ‘you have celiacs disease/grain allergy’ Then they are probably going to keep talking and charge you an extra 200$ for sitting there and being ‘consulted’. Leave immediately and eat some bread.

I Avoided The Freshman 15 (The rest of my dorm did… not.)

My first semester of college was fake. It had to be, I felt like I was stuck on a country bumpkin midwest version of ‘The Hills’. Not only did it feel like that, but majority of the girls who lived on my floor had actually gone to the extremes of OWNING ‘The Hills’ on DVD.

Anyway, all the chicks on my floor came from another planet that was probably populated by other droids like themselves. They all tanned in between the hours of 2-6pm, they wore nothing but Victoria’s Secret sweatsuits, and they all had skunk hair. (Skunk Hair: a dye job consisting of both black/brunette and platinum blonde) These girls were always nice to my face but behind closed doors they liked to use their outdoor voice and turn up cross-over-pop-country really loud. (Or god forbid the ‘superman that hoe’ song)

Another thing that these chicks found difficult was healthy eating habits. I really don’t understand how someone can eat nothing but Easy Mac, pizza, Oreos and beer for more than three days and not blow up of constipation. (Or just blow up for the sake of blowing up) They were always running to the ‘community room’ to use the microwave because low and behold their room mate was using their microwave to nuke some other starch parfait. I don’t want to admit that I was the ‘Girl who hates beer and picks at a salad with her other sneery friend’ but I was indeed the ’Girl who hates beer and picks at a salad with her other sneery friend’.

That’s exactly how I avoided gaining any weight my freshman year. And all the years after that. I had a sour elitist attitude and would flaunt my salad eating in front of all the fake bakin’ bitches. I’d parade around in the halls crunching on carrots with my mouth open like a moo cow. (Crunch Crunch Crunch over all that shitty country music!) Sometimes, I would just stand outside of these girls doors during sleeping hours and eat carrots, and when I heard them rustling around I’d bolt away like a complete loon. My crowning moment of healthy treating was when all the good looking boys flocked to my room one weekend because I was giving out rice cakes and Nutella. The girls didn’t know about the rice cakes, they thought I was just giving out pussy. (Oh yeah, me and my high standards are hanging out in my room getting triple teamed by all these polo shirt collar poppin’ virgins.)

The other trick? Not drinking beer. Or drinking an entire bottle of vodka over the course of two nights. Little did these dumb bitches know that every shot they took was 200+ calories. By the end of my first semester, all these hot to trot ladies now looked like kegs with legs. Tall and short chicks alike, everyone but me was rocking an awesome beer gut. Except for that one girl who didn’t know she was six months pregnant. (I kid you not, the girl had no clue… She could have been on that ridiculous ‘I didn’t know I was pregnant’ show on Comedy Central. Oops I mean TLC)

One last thing. Citrus water. In the cafeteria they had these huge jugs of ice water that had lemons or limes or oranges or grapefruits in them. I’m not sure how many people are aware of this, but citrus water does some serious appetite diminishing. I’d go roaring into the buffet line with the munchies of a manly man but my beast was always calmed by the giant glistening jugs of citrus water. (In fact, most hunger stems from dehydration. To avoid over eating, drink some fluids first and wait awhile. Still hungry? Then go eat dammit!)

Juice Cleanse: The Farce and its Victims.

As mentioned, I am a ‘Natural Foods Connoisseur’. My current employment requires this so they have their own certifying program. That means I get to sit through lectures about the odds and ends of homeopathy, poopy soy products, and why it’s always important for a chicken to be happy and cage-free before you slaughter it. (You also shouldn’t put eggs in cages because apparently cage-free eggs are MUCH better for you, me, and our pal earth.)

Phase 1: On the sales floor, it’s my job to educate customers and eventually get them to purchase some unnecessary  wellness product or some overpriced free-range rib eye steaks. Lately, my education efforts have gone towards these rather rotund women on some weird ‘juice’ cleanse where the juice is actually lemon water, honey and cayenne pepper. They usually use the “I’m just doing this to be healthier.” Line, when I think it may just translate to “I am a fat and frequently try fad diets.”

Phase 2: The lemon-honey-cayenne-water will do nothing except MAYBE cleanse a few organs. Otherwise, if you aren’t eating anything with it, you become irritable and unpleasant and no one wants to be your friend. My next step is to convince the customer to buy an actual fresh juice which is made by shoving vegetables through this huge scary loud juicer that is near impossible to clean. (Beats… apples… carrots…lemons… cucumber…etc.)

Phase 3: Although the fresh juiced juice that I made for this poor gullible woman is now packed with 20 times more nutrients than her wannabe-tea concoction, she is still losing out on some valuable calorie burning. She could have just eaten the 2 pounds of produce I put through the juicer and had almost two meals worth. And because they would have been whole vegetables and fruits, her body would have burned more calories eating/digesting them than it just did slurping the 7$ juice down. (If there are red beats in the juice, their poop will be pink.)

Because I do not know the names of the countless women and men who do this everyday (Spend 7$ on a puny cup of juice…) I must hope they stumble upon this post and never fall for the fresh juice farce ever again.