Based on a Sprue Story

In honor of tomorrow’s Independence Day here in the good USA, I took a break from imagining gluten as my evil ex-boyfriend and personified him instead as the evil ex-king of England. If you too have declared independence from gluten, I hope you’ll join me in signing this important document.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for a People to dissolve the bands which have connected them with a Protein, and to assume among the eaters of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nurture entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Something Else That I Would Remember Were It Not For the Brain Fog.

That whenever any Way of Eating becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Eaters to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Diet, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing their meals in such form, as to them seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Eating Habits long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the foods to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Inflammation, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such a Diet, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of this Body; and such is now the necessity which constrains it to alter its former Systems of Nourishment. The history of Gluten is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these Guts. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Gluten has refused its Assent to the absorption of Nutrients, the most wholesome and necessary for the body’s good.

It has forbidden the Intestines to pass Gases of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended till their Force and Odor be overpowering.

It has called bodies to the lavatory at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of its preferred-ply toilet paper, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with its peristalsis.

It has dissolved Intestinal Barriers repeatedly, for opposing with leak-free firmness its invasions on the rest of the body.

It has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause other tight junctions to be generated, whereby the Digestive Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the Body at large for their exercise; the Organs remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

It has endeavoured to prevent the population of the Toilet; for that purpose obstructing the bowel’s Naturalization of Movement; refusing to pass stools to encourage their migrations to the bowl.

It has sent hither swarms of Antibodies to harass our small intestines and eat out their tiny hairlike structures.

It has kept among us, in times of pizza, Standing Armies of Antibodies without the Consent of our bodies.

It has affected to render the Immune System independent of and antagonistic to the rest of the body.

It has combined with others to subject us to food intolerances foreign to our constitution; giving its Assent to Acts of pretended Immune Regulation:

For quartering large antibodies against tissue transglutaminase among us:

For protecting them from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Villi of these Guts:

For imposing Taxes on our energy without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Denial of Fury:

For abolishing the gluten-free System of Eating in neighbouring Restaurants, establishing therein a Standard American Diet, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render them at once examples and fit instruments for introducing the same foods into these Bodies

For taking away our Appetites, abolishing our most valuable Vitamins, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Excrements:

Gluten has abdicated Nourishment here, by waging War against us.

It has plundered our teeth, ravaged our skin, burnt our hearts, and destroyed our bowels.

It is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Proteins to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy a Food in a civilized nation.

It has constrained our fellow Cells taken Captive to bear Arms against our Villi.

It has excited digestive insurrections within us, and has endeavoured to bring on the merciless Celiac Disease whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Recovery in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Protein, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the staple food of a people.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our Oaten brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their fellow grains to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement away from gluten. We have appealed to their native soluble fibers, and we have conjured them to disavow these usurpations, which would, inevitably, interrupt our consumption and enjoyment of them. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of grainkind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the celiac Guts of America, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the gluten-free Bodies, solemnly publish and declare,

That these united Bodies are, and of Right ought to be Gluten-Free and Independent Bodies; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to Wheat, Barley, and Rye, and that all connection between them and Gluten is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent Guts, they have full Power to levy War on Gluten, conclude Peace with Villi, not contract additional Diseases, establish Commerce with Companies Providing Gluten-Free Baked Goods, and to do all other Acts and Things which Gluten-Independent Bodies may of right do.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of FDA regulations, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Recipes and our sacred Honor.

Signed by
Molly Cavanaugh (and you, if you’d like, in the comments)

Happy 4th to my fellow Americans, and to everyone else, a happy gluten independence day. I plan to drink these red, white, and blue “sparklers” and wish I were motivated (and air-conditioned) enough to make patriotic GF cake pops too.