Every day it seems, someone else becomes gluten-free. It’s the new scapegoat of the era. Every magazine and health guru has their own spin on what exactly this little miscreant does to those who unthinkingly ingest this malignant menace.

Are you overweight? Don’t eat gluten. Feeling tired? Stop with all the gluten gluten. Wrinkles got you down? We both know it’s all that gluten you’re eating. Want to live another ten years. Easy. Eliminate the gluten from your diet.

It seems like we can blame everything dietary on that little… whatever it is and feel justified about it. Gluten-free options are popping up on menus across the nation. Products that never had any in the first place slap a gluten-free sticker on their packaging and see the sales rise by 3%. It’s a capitalist miracle. Or maybe its scare tactics. Or maybe it’s a big made up farce constructed by the Free Masons or the reptilians or whoever to drive the wheat farmers out of business.

But hopefully none of this comes across as a complaint of any sort. In fact, I’m thankful that I live in the era where awareness of gluten is becoming more and more prevalent. Like many people, I am gluten-free. Although, and in this I feel in the minority, I am not so by choice. I have a genetic condition that does not allow me to ingest the titular binding agent without rather unpleasant consequences to myself. If I had lived in the past generation, with virtually no awareness of what was the issue with me, I might have been far worse off.

In fact, there is simply no might about it. I know that I would have because, since Celiac Disease is a genetic condition, and therefore inherited, my mother suffered through that very situation herself and she is still profoundly affected by it to this day. The particular strain of the disease that we are infected, although that is far from the right term, with causes intense drowsiness, loss of focus and internal organ damage (although that one might have just been made up to keep an undisciplined young man away from the baguettes). For my mother, whenever she would eat she would become immensely tired to the point of non-functionality. Without knowing the specific agent responsible she came to associate all food with a loss of agency and avoided eating whenever possible.

As might be expected, this has not fostered in her a loving relationship with the fine art of cuisine, and I, of course, say this in the most loving possible manner. I have come to understand that no one cooks at home in my absence. Even as a child, when my brother and I were away for extended periods of time, my mother reported that she subsisted solely on avocado and microwaved chicken patties for months on end.

Once, I regarded this prospect with guilt and horror. Guilt in that it was a touchstone for how much I imagined the absence of her children affected her, perfect little angels that we were and horror at the sheer blandness of the meal. I once liked to think of myself as something of an aspiring chef and my moral outrage was grounded in this aspect of my identity. There was a white plastic trash bin that I would don before the mirror and pretend that it was a chef’s hat. To me, this monotony was the most serious of offenses.

Around the time I started high school, my mother got herself tested and discovered she was gluten intolerant. For my brother and me things didn’t change much. When my mother cooked, she made two meals one with gluten for us and one without for her. When I cooked, I made whatever I pleased without a second thought. This didn’t last long. Around Christmas of my freshman year of high school I found myself getting tired after dinner and going immediately to bed. For the first couple of days, I thought nothing of it. And even as the condition persisted and I connected the dots, I refused to accept the most likely explanation. I was resistant at first when my mother offered to make more of the gluten-free portion one night but eventually I caved in. And, of course, I felt better. But with that came the knowledge that I was diseased. That, on the most basic, protein-to-protein level, there was something off-center about my being.

And that kinda took the wind out of my sails on the whole cooking deal. Even though I had long since stopped wearing a waste bin, that moment was what really felt like the end. But looking back, I think I may have gained more than I lost. There is weight to all those magazines and gurus, I’m in far better shape than I have a right to be given my eating and exercise habits and I always have an excuse to leave places early. And the biggest plus perhaps, is that I’ve gained perspective. When I think about avocados and microwave chicken patties, now I feel something more akin to awe or comradery. There is something tenacious and resourceful about finding something that works and sticking with it no matter how distasteful it might seem, or in this case taste. And the unwavering dedication to such a regime is something that I struggle with to this day.

I feel jealous or maybe envious of people who are gluten-free by choice. Not only in that they can quit or cheat whenever they want but that they will never suffer the consequences for a slip of willpower. But then I remember that I too am gluten-free by choice, in a sense. There is no one forcing me to pander to my genetic coding. Sure, I never asked for this condition, but no one asks to be born at all yet we keep forcing it on one another. And, since I intend to be a father someday and potentially sire off-normal children, it is only fitting that I live through the challenges, such as they are, that I might some day pass on to them.