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Dieting in any form is an insidiously difficult process.  Giving up food (or
alcohol, or cigarettes, or sex or simply changing a work habit or a mental
concept) requires hard work.  In fifty years of medical practice discussing
these issues with people for health reasons, I asked one question literally
thousands of times without ever getting a correct answer:  "What is the main
reason all over the world that people diet?"  The answer:  RELIGION.  All
organized religions urge us to renounce instinctual gratifications of one
sort or another.  My point in asking the question was to focus the discussion
away from the specific narrow physical issue (such as gluten) to the broader
psychologic struggle involved.  Obviously, whatever it is that religious
leaders are trying to teach us, it is obvious that they have all hit on
dieting as one method.  With this in mind, I want to discuss the issue in
this celiac forum.

Do I detect in this group qualities of industry, tolerance, patience,
compassion, generosity and the capacitity for concern which translate easily
into religious teachings?  Consider the virtual absence of "flaming" on this
list (I sometimes wish I saw more of it).  Consider the bottomless faith of
the list owners who are responsible for this list.  Faith plus works.  My
point is that these qualities do not come easily to people and I suspect that
the universal celiac condition has in some way contributed, via the same
route as the religious one, to ideals and character which, if we are to be
honest, probably would never have emerged without the sacrifices we have
accepted as part of living.  If I am right in this, I can easily say that
awful though it may be, what seems to emerge from the diet beyond healthy
intestinal function and freedom from all of the other physical ailments, is
something which is even better.  True you don't have to be celiac to get
there but it helps.

Jack Maines in Ithaca, NY- married to Phyllis, with several celiac children
and neighbors with Sylvia, Angelica, Gayle and Mary and not far from Pamela
Anderregg in Auburn.  And, speaking as a non-celiac, I am eating pretty good
these days.