In Memory of Bread - Review

There have been a lot of books written about Celiac disease, most from a scientific perspective, not many from a personal perspective. But in Paul Graham's memoir In Memory of Bread, he recounts what it was like to live 30+ years as a gluten eater and then suddenly be told that the food and beverages he loved so much were killing him.

Beer and bread were what Graham missed the most, and he goes on a quest to find decent GF substitutes, only to ask that without the gluten - the ingredients that make bread "bread" and beer "beer" - can either truly be called "bread" or "beer"?

Graham and his wife are pretty lucky, a fact he readily admits. While they don't live in an area where GF products are available in abundance, they do have the means to belong to a CSA and get farm-fresh veggies and meats for cooking and eating REAL, naturally gluten-free food. Not everyone with Celiac disease has that luxury. Not every with Celiac disease, I'm sure, can afford the processed GF food substitutes. And that's really sad. If it's not enough to have to give up some of your favorite foods, try paying $8 for a substitute that really doesn't taste the same.

As the wife of someone with Celiac, I hope Graham's book opens people's eyes to this autoimmune disease and just how difficult it is to continue eating and enjoying food in the same way. There's no way that anyone willingly goes gluten-free.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.