The gluten rant

Holy Cow people.

It is very hard. It's harder than I thought, and it's unfair.

When you start a diet, whether out of free will or involuntarily, then you always know that you will hit a wall. You just do. You have to give up something in order to feel leaner, better, and healthier. Well, going gluten free wasn't my choice. At first it was because I had to find out what bothered me for so many years. Then it turned out to be an intolerance towards anything with wheat, barley, rye, and malt in it. Lovely. So, gluten free it is.

In California I had my troubles but soon learned that pretty much every restaurant offers a gluten free menu, most grocery stores have sections offering gluten free food, and you can easily get around the whole gluten trouble.

In Istanbul/Turkey it was easier than I thought. Lots of dishes are bread-like, but also, most of them are made from corn flour. My heart was so happy. However, there were times I just didn't know or couldn't know whether one dish was made from corn or "regular" flour. I ate it anyways, and usually paid the sad price. :( Their grocery stores and sections were labeled and I found my necessarily food easily.

In Switzerland?! OHMYGOSH. Not so much. My aunt was like ''oh yeah, there's a lot available at this and this grocery store and easily labeled". Ehhmmm. Not so much my dear readers. First of all, there's not a lot available. Granted, maybe compared to ten years ago there's a lot now. However, there's still not enough. AND, where did the easily labeled part come from?

They advertised so much saying it is called this and that (freeform in one grocery store, aha in another for example) but holy cow it's not easily visible or labeled. I mean, if you enter a grocery store and you MUST LOOK FOR SPECIFIC DIETARY ITEMS you gotta find those quick because everything else is there in full bulk available for every other soul but if you need something that will help you stay healthy and ache free and you advertise it so greatly then please, for all the people out there, label it so we can see. 

Needless to say I'm disappointed. For a country that claims to be modern and clearly helps thousands of people from all over the world with whatever means (may it be money, food, medical treatments, or heck even asylum) then please move your lazy butt for once and help your own people in your own darn country. I don't want to pay $12 for flour, nor do I want to pay $10 for spaghetti - in a clearly labeled bio/organic store that sells overpriced stuff anyways. I just don't. That is why you started offering gluten free items in "regular" grocery stores. I don't want to pay $4 either because, yes I know, gluten free is special and special always costs more. But for the love of health and stomach aches, make it possible for it all to be somewhere in between $4 and $9. $6 would be preferable, clearly. I'd pay even $4.50. Ha! I wish.

Don't get me started on the restaurants. That would be a whole other story and I just want to cry thinking about it. So I let it be at that.

So, my little rant for today is I think over.

Clearly, I am not used to this. Ha, and I knew prices were higher, but for heaven's sake label items or sections. I found one store I never go to and they have a tiny section that's beautifully labeled. Their prices were WOW but the labels were fun. Going to a regular store, well, those labels are hardly visible. And if I see food I want to eat but can't...well, then I see labels with a huge image of wheat on the package. It's like looking at a blog post with a blurry background image of wheat. Interesting. At least I know what I'm missing out on.

Just fantastic.

Thanks for rubbing it in.

I clearly needed that.

xoxo

P.s. This is a scheduled post. I'm still in Germany. I'll be back soon.