Celiac Disease Communication — Part 2 — Restaurants
Communicating you have celiac disease (CD) is a lifelong chore that comes with diagnosis. Create the discipline and mind-frame to own this task for life!
Even if you get tired of talking about your condition, the disease itself never tires. Even if it’s embarrassing or uncomfortable to bring it up at every meal, it’s more cumbersome to live with symptoms. Even if you get frustrated when people don’t understand the severity, your health will only get worse if you don’t communicate clearly at every meal.
When you eat out among new people or work colleagues, you may be tempted to choose safe-seeming items like salad with chicken, not say anything about CD, and hope for the best. However that chicken could be fried, croutons may be thrown on top, and the dressing likely has wheat starch or flour in it. Cross contamination (CC) is NOT OKAY if you have celiac. You cannot pick off the croutons and maintain health.
Luckily for gluten-free people, many restaurants indicate GF items on the menu and most places have heard of gluten so they can offer a few ideas for modifications to meals. However for those of us who need to be careful about CC, a deeper discussion with serving staff is required.
Always reiterate you want the GF version of a menu item and explain you are asking due to necessity and not a preference.
When the menu indicates an item has no gluten and that’s exactly what you want to eat, yay! However never just order it without telling the server you have gluten issues as often the chef will need to wipe surfaces or maybe leave out one ingredient in the dish. When I order an item at a restaurant that is indicated GF I have a multi-step dialogue that goes something like this…
“Hi there yes I’m ready, I noticed you have GF items on the menu and I have celiac disease. Can I order the gluten-free version of this please?”
Sometimes the server will look at you like you’re an idiot and say, “Yeah there’s no gluten in that, you’re good,” in which case I will always respond with a polite statement similar to,
“Great, thank you. And if you don’t mind adding a note for the cooks about celiac, I just feel more comfortable if the chef knows in case they have breadcrumbs on their hands or surfaces or something.”
Or I might say,
“Perfect, thank you. Do you mind letting the chef know it’s a true gluten issue and not a preference? I’ll feel better if they are aware as I know lots of people will order the GF bun but still eat the beer battered fries or something.”
Whatever statement you choose, always ALWAYS tell the server you cannot eat gluten and make the small extra effort to ensure the kitchen knows as well. It’s an awkward conversation and gets tiring to say this at every meal outside the house but your disease doesn’t get tired. You are responsible for this minor act of self-care for the rest of your life.
Ensure the cooking surfaces or cooking oil is celiac safe (CS), which is different than “gluten-friendly”.
When you tell the server you have celiac disease this also removes many “GF” options from your list of options due to cross contamination. Many appetizers will contain no gluten (gluten-friendly) but will be deep fried in oil containing gluten sources such as batter or breading. As someone with celiac, you must not eat these foods. On the bright side, your arteries will be much healthier and you’ll feel better when you opt for the salad instead of fries!
Also be wary of GF pizza. This usually just means the crust contains no gluten sources but often the portion containers with all the ingredients to top the pizza have gluten-fingers in and out of them all day. There is surely gluten in the ingredient containers. Also the surface the pizza is assembled on could have gluten and the surface it is cooked on is almost always the same surface as flour-covered gluten crusts.
GF pizza is sadly reserved for the trendy GF people, not the true GF people. Remove pizza from your pool of possibilities in your mind before you decide to dine out. You will have to reserve your pizza nights for at-home cooking.
However without getting your hopes up, you can always ask the server if they think the pizza is celiac-safe. If they don’t know the answer right away, they will check with the kitchen for you, and any chef who offers GF pizza crust should be knowledgable about cross contamination. You never know, they may change their gloves with each pizza assembled and bake the GF ones in a separate oven, so it is worth asking! I’ve even dined at one California restaurant that had a separate assembly line and set of ovens for GF pizza.
Furthermore some small mom-and-pop shops like the fish and chips joint in my neighbourhood will offer a GF bun for the burgers, but they don’t have a GF toaster or grill area to toast that bun. You will have to communicate to the counter staff or server when ordering that your food items cannot come in contact with crumbs. This may mean ordering GF bread un-toasted (which is never tasty) meaning you might enjoy a fresh salad or other option more.
Frame your mind around long term health rather than short term food pleasure (you can always take yourself out for a fantastic GF meal another time).
Sometimes it’s disappointing that GF items are not CS but do you know what’s worse than eating something boring? Getting anemia, colon cancer, heart disease, and other conditions associated with eating gluten after being diagnosed with CD.
Dining out and expressing your needs as a person with celiac disease or severe gluten issues is a matter of understanding how kitchens work and taking the time to have a detailed conversation about your meal which is ultimately your health.
Each time you keep a question or comment about cross contamination inside, you are telling yourself you are not worth the effort, that your health doesn’t matter, that your long standing symptoms and conditions are bearable in comparison to this 30 second conversation.
If, as someone with severe gluten issues, this is something your struggle with, please take the time to write to yourself in a journal or notebook about your own self worth. I’ll leave you with a few journal prompts so that you don’t just understand the importance of communicating your needs, but you also reflect on it in your own life and make a plan to implement this act of self-care.
Journal prompts for communication skills regarding gluten issues:
Why do I find it difficult or awkward to talk about my gluten-free needs? Is this the truth or is it something else like my opinion, my past experiences, or my feelings?
Recall an experience where you didn’t express your needs properly and were exposed to gluten. Re-write how you could have communicated in this experience (write it in the first person to educate your memory on first-person tools and wording for next time).
Write down five reasons it is important to communicate the severity and condition of your gluten issues, using positive, first person wording about your felt experience of living in your own body such as, “I feel high energy and my clothes feel good on my body,” rather than, “I don’t feel tired and bloated.”
Communicate your needs as a form of self-care and accustom yourself to this habit for a the rest of a vibrant and healthy life.
Thank you for reading!
