<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> This is a long one. I thank everyone who responded to my earlier posting, Optional routes to GF diet. Of 37 responses, 35 expressed support for the views I put forth. Two held me to task for not accounting for the effects of peer pressure on young people. This posting is an expansion of my earlier one, an attempt to explore how we look at ourselves. Is CD truly a disease, or is it a genetic condition aggravated by the foodways of a society that imposes a diet of industrial-strength gluten on its members, whether they can tolerate it or not? This is an important question because our answer bears strongly on how we look at and present ourselves. Is there something wrong with us? Or are we ok, and happen to belong to a society that unwittingly rides roughshod over the variability of its members? As one who has gone to a string of doctors over 45 years, without once obtaining relief from the symptoms I presented, I have been tempted to dismiss the medical profession as a bunch of bumbling incompetents. But that judgment would be unfair to them, as certain practitioners have been unfair to me in dismissing or misdiagnosing my complaints. That is a discussion I do not intend to reopen. In good conscience, I cannot blame the doctors I have seen any more than I can blame myself. I am ok. They are ok. We all do the best we can with what we've got in the time allowed. The problem with celiac so-called disease is in the fit between certain individuals and the society in which they live. In a very real sense, we are not sick, nor can we blame our society for making us miserable. The rub occurs in the interaction between us. Since society is largely unprepared to manage that interaction, if the situation is to be improved, it is up to us as individuals to do something about it. Rather than seeing ourselves as misfits or, worse, as diseased, we can accept responsibility for managing our condition in ways that minimize any discomfort to ourselves or to those around us. This is particularly important for young people in developing a sense of competence and self-worth. They are not sick. They do not have a disease. They are not misfits. Like everyone else, they are who they are, people with a unique set of individual characteristics, one of which in their case happens to be gluten intolerance, which is a fact of life and nothing to apologize for. The upshot of this argument is that how we manage our lives is up to us. Society will not bail us out. It is a waste of time and energy to indulge in self-pity or casting blame. The question we all face is, how are we to live our lives? We have a choice. We can make ourselves dependent on others who do not understand our condition, insuring we will suffer till the end of our days. Or we can build a life from the inside-out, based on our own self-knowledge, being who we are instead of wishing we were someone else. As a first step, I propose we rename ourselves as a constituency characterized by gluten intolerance (GI), instead of seeing ourselves as victims of celiac disease (CD). Managed sensibly, the disease goes away, leaving us with a lifelong intolerance to gluten. If we lived in a GF society, we'd never know we were "sick." Our challenge is to create cells of such a GF society in the midst of our broader gluten-addicted society. This list gives us the means of doing just that. I have wallowed in ignorance most of my life. With the help of those who sustain and contribute to this discussion, I have seen the light. Thank you all, and let's not rest till we make a GF society accessible to everyone with a birthright of gluten intolerance. Steve Perrin