It was a dark and stormy night…. No, actually it was a nice dinner out with family! It happened over the Christmas/New Year’s holiday this last year. We had eaten at a particular Italian restaurant that we had eaten at numerous times before without issue. My husband and I loved the gluten-free bread, which was really a gluten-free pizza crust baked up, without toppings, and served warm in a basket. Wonderful! Even though my husband does not need to be gluten-free, he likes this particular bread, which I find fascinating, because it surprises me when a non-Celiac person likes something that is gluten-free.
My son and I have celiac disease and need to be gluten-free. My daughter is gluten intolerant so she eats gluten-free as well. All 4 of us had ordered our meals. As we were waiting for our meal to arrive, the server brought the wonderful gluten-free bread. My son and I took one or two pieces and promptly ate them. I was reaching for another piece when the server rushed up to our table and frantically told us that the bread was not gluten-free. He had served us the wheat tortilla by accident!
My son and I looked at each other in wide eyed surprise. Uh oh! My daughter giggled. My husband got upset at the server. But I took it calmly. Now what? It was an accident and the server apologized profusely. Even the restaurant manager came over and apologized. (We forgave them). We got our entire dinner for free that night. But by the time our meals arrived, I was too nervous to eat much. What if I got really sick in the next hour or so? Should I eat my meal and risk having a full stomach on top of the illness that was sure to come?
For those of you who are not familiar with Celiac disease, it is an autoimmune disease where the ingestion of wheat (gluten) leads to damage of the lining of the small intestine. This results in diarrhea, loose stools, gas, and other symptoms while the wheat is moving through your system. I had all of these symptoms when I was first diagnosed with Celiac disease 20 years ago. My son did not have the GI symptoms as we caught it early when he was about 5 years old.
We cautiously finished our meal and left the restaurant. On the way home and for the next several hours my son and I kept checking in with each other…”how do you feel? Any symptoms yet?” Amazingly neither of us got sick in any way! Maybe a little “gas” but that was it. I have read blog posts by other celiac writers and they complain of very bad symptoms after getting gluten accidentally. Why didn’t we get sick?
The only thing I can think of is that since we both were entirely gluten-free and fully healed, that the amount of wheat we consumed was not enough to cause immediate damage and we handled it just fine. That is not to say that we can go on and start eating gluten now. We still have celiac disease which is only controlled by a gluten-free diet.
This was not the case years ago when I was first diagnosed with celiac disease. It took me about a year to find and eliminate all the gluten in my diet. My stomach was still in the healing phase. Labeling of food products was poor back then. At that time I had to go on a business trip to Spain and had to rely on my Spanish speaking colleagues to read the food labels for me. I got glutened once on the trip (after eating a candy bar that my colleagues swore had no wheat). My stomach did roll-overs and jumping jacks for a few hours. No fun.
That was the only other time I was significantly “glutened”. OK, OK, I have to admit there was one other time that I “ate” gluten on purpose. I just wanted to see what Krispy Kreme donuts tasted like! I took one bite, “tasted” them, and then spit them out immediately. No harm done! (They tasted great!)
One last thing to note- after taking a bite of the wheat tortilla at the restaurant, I did not notice a difference in taste. I did not taste “wheat”. No alarm bells went off. I thought wheat would have been more obvious to me. In my years of being gluten-free, maybe I forgot what wheat tasted like. Or, maybe, gluten-free items have gotten so good that they mimic wheat almost exactly. I prefer to believe the latter. The take-away for me was this- every time I am served an item at a restaurant, I need to ask the question “is this gluten-free?” I believe our server would have recognized his mistake immediately if I had asked that simple question.
Remember, I am not a doctor and I do not give medical advice. I invite you to make a comment below!!
Happy to hear that you and yours did not suffer from the Restaurant’s mishap. It did sound like the business handled the situation about as responsibly as it could have under the circumstances. Lessons learned are always a good thing!
Your article is very entertaining, and informative… Thank you for sharing!
I was nervous when I started reading this….I’m so happy you didn’t have a reaction! Miss you lady!
Someone I know suggested that maybe the wheat bread was not wheat at all and maybe it really was the gluten free tortilla, and that the taste of wheat would have been more noticeable. That would explain the “no reaction”. I will never know! (Jackie)