One thing we overlook in the quest for gluten and other allergy foods, is that food is a basic part of the social compact. We know each other through shared experience, and a primal part of that shared experience is food. I was viscerally reminded of this on this trip. I’m with 3 others who can eat anything they want. I’ve realized it bothered me less when they shared food and I couldn’t find things to eat, than it did when I found native foods I could eat and they wouldn’t share them with me. I am in the habit of window shopping bakeries and other food places that have nothing I can eat. But I can admire. Then lucky me, I found an ancient bakery in Istanbul that made naturally (nut based) GF cookies/deserts. I was thrilled. I bought one and loved it, so ordered six different flavors because I wanted my friends to share with me and I wanted to take some home to deconstruct and make them for the bakery. But my friends weren’t interested in the one delicious item I could eat. Instead they went across the street and bought items to share that I couldn’t eat. And it was like a punch in the gut. Even last night when I went to sleep I still felt bad. And then I realized why. As a little girl, I grew up as the only white kid in a black neighborhood/school. I was often beaten up and not invited to join in with the other kids. When we moved to a mostly white neighbor, I wasn’t allowed in my friend’s houses because my step father was black. I remember being 7 and sitting on a swing at a park watching the neighborhood picnic to which I wasn’t invited. I even worked up the nerve to say Me! when someone shouted who wants watermelon!? (I was given no watermelon.) That was a profoundly traumatic experience, that I never really acknowledged emotionally, until last night when I asked myself, why do I feel so bad?
When someone is left out of the food social compact, it’s a form of ostracism, not that different really than what I experienced as a child. I was always sitting outside, looking into the lit room where everyone else was enjoying a sense of shared experience. I realize now how very important this discussion is, particularly for the sake of children who have limiting food allergies. Because social ostracism is traumatizing. The reason I started Violette Bakers is to address this issue. We only make food that everyone can enjoy because I got sick of having my own little item while everyone else was sharing. It upsets me when a customer says, its xyz’s birthday and they are gluten free so we are getting them a cupcake or small cake and getting a regular cake for her guests. That is so wrong on so many levels, but people who can eat anything don’t seem to understand. I got you something GF, why are you upset? I think as a community we need to do better in explaining to ourselves and to others why it’s important that people in our lives share food with us that we can eat. The point is the shared experience. It is particularly important given the large number of kids nowadays who have food allergies. The feelings that arise on a primal level from being excluded are hard for an adult to process and impossible for a child. Look at me, I’m a self-aware adult who almost sat down and cried in a crowded public place because my friends refused to share food with me. It pierced the stiff upper lip I’ve maintained about being excluded from this social compact. It hurts on a wordless level. Let’s all talk about this more amongst ourselves and with those in our lives. It is important.
