Your diet is an important part of your overall health, and bread and other products containing gluten are staples in most diets in our society. So what happens to your diet – and your health – when you’re diagnosed with a disease that requires eliminating bread and other gluten-containing products from your diet entirely?
Today’s guest is an authority on that topic, and he’s written a book about it. Paul Graham is an English professor and author who loved beer and bread before he was diagnosed with celiac disease. Paul is joining the podcast today to talk about his new book, In Memory of Bread, and what it’s like to live life without gluten.
Topics Discussed in This Episode:
- Paul’s book, which follows his experiences the year he was diagnosed with celiac disease
- How Paul discovered he had celiac disease, and what that was like
- What celiac is and how it affects the body
- The cultural significance of bread and other gluten-containing food and beverages
- How Paul got into microbrewery
- What it was like to go completely gluten-free
- The connection between food and nostalgia
- Kitchen experiments that Paul tried to replace bread in his diet
- Go-to grains that Paul recommends for people who are trying to avoid gluten
- Paul’s favorite kitchen tools
- Theories on why diagnoses of celiac disease are on the rise
- Tips for maintaining a healthy gut
- How Paul got interested in running
- The marathon that Paul is training to participate in later this year
- The importance of balance, discipline, and listening to your body
- The positives that Paul has discovered about living with celiac
- Advice for people newly diagnosed with celiac disease
Links and Resources:
Quotes:
“I really try to be where I am. That’s what I try to do, I think that’s what I’m about.”
“What I was insistently doing, and what a lot of people insistently do, is I was going for the substitutions.”
“We are eating more potent doses of gluten, in some cases, than people used to eat.”
