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Celiac disease and COVID-19
Over the last month or two during the COVID-19 pandemic, Peter and I have been pretty much in full quarantine. We’re very lucky that our work (and my education) does not require that we leave the house, so we actually had the option (and the privilege) to stay inside during this time. While weekends are hard because we don’t ever feel like we get a break and while our work/school lives are at least as busy as they ever were, at least we’ve been able to keep working while staying safe.
We could have left the house more during this time because we’ve been living under social distancing rules, not full-on quarantine restrictions. Places are also reopening with restrictions in our county.
Despite all of this, we’ve been very concerned about catching or spreading the virus. I knew so little about whether I was at more risk of catching COVID-19 or having complications from it as a Celiac that we’ve been cautious. I have always gotten sick very easily (and frequently), especially with respiratory infections.
Upon further research, there doesn’t seem to be an increased risk for Celiacs when it comes t catching COVID-19, but there does seem to be a slightly increased risk of respiratory problems. However, my immune system doesn’t seem to be any more compromised by being a Celiac.
I originally didn’t want to write anything about COVID-19. I figured that we were all in this bad situation together, globally, and that nothing had really changed in my day-to-day life. I especially thought that because my Celiac disease hardly increased my risks of becoming seriously ill with the virus that there wasn’t much that I could really say on the subject. However, I did realize that more had changed during this time than I’d thought – from trying different foods, to meal planning, to finding ways to focus on my health.
What’s stayed the same for us before/during COVID-19?
Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, Peter and I were already working from home. We miss going to movies every weekend (we’re AMC Stubs A-List members), but we generally get some Florida sunshine several times a day for exercise or for walking our dog, Odin. We’re also generally video game-playing, TV show-streaming folks, so our weeknights look almost the same as before (but with 155+ hours of Animal Crossing for me alone).
Our dog, Odin, who is also our quarantine buddy (we’ve had him for over a year now).
We already knew how to cook for ourselves (if you didn’t already realize it), and we opted to do this 95% of the time.
We’ve been making our own gluten-free bread for over a year now (which we’ll be updating you all on soon), and we’re used to co-existing in the same kitchen as a Celiac and a non-Celiac. This meant keeping our food separate (except for cooked meals together, which tend to be gluten-free/allergy-free) and constantly cleaning surfaces that might have once come in contact with gluten – even if we weren’t 100% sure.
How have things changed for us during COVID-19?
The biggest change for us during COVID-19 has been food availability. Not only have stores been sold out of many of our staple foods (like eggs – although this is getting better), but we can’t just run to the store like we used to just to pick up what we feel like eating. We’ve had to be much more deliberate with what we buy, and sometimes we’ve had to go without certain foods.
For example, early in the COVID-19 pandemic we struggled to find chicken. Just plain chicken thighs – or any kind of chicken for that matter. But when I went to our local grocery store, there was very little chicken left that was fully gluten-free or allergy-free. I eventually found a bag of frozen chicken wings that I could eat and grabbed it as fast as I could.
Finding new stores
While our local stores have been taking the pandemic seriously from the beginning and have done a great job with store sanitation and trying to enforce social distancing rules, I had bad experiences with customers in-store that made it hard to actually shop.
Not only were essentials sold-out within an hour of stores opening, but people were grabbing multiple carts when they walked in the store, bringing their whole families, and standing way less than 6 feet away from me.
Upon a family member’s recommendation, I wound up trying out a smaller local grocery store not too far from where we live. I found tons of chicken, eggs, milk… you name it. It wasn’t my first thought, mainly because we have a much bigger chain store less than 5 minutes from our house, but it was so much easier to find everything we needed and our grocery cost came out low.
While we stopped going there after we discovered other grocery options, we will definitely be trying out local stores and smaller stores post-quarantine. We’re glad to have made that discovery.
Grocery ordering
After a few weeks of going physically to stores and recounting some of my horror stories about customers to Peter, he really wanted to find a way to reduce how often I had to go out.
That’s when he found out about Shipt. This service had a free trial for a month to get Target deliveries. We already use Target Circle and have a Red Card, so it seemed like a good idea. The only thing that held us back was that we wouldn’t be in stores reading the labels ourselves, which is something that I’m sure any Celiac (or person with food allergies, sensitivities, or intolerances) would feel anxious about.
Luckily, we found out that we could select the “no substitutions” option in the Target app. That is, our shopper wouldn’t be able to swap out items using their own discretion if something were unavailable.
This helped us feel less worried about getting a bunch of food that I couldn’t eat, but it did mean that if something were sold out that we just wouldn’t get it.
Most of our order experiences actually were pretty complete. Sometimes we’d over-order in case items were missing and actually end up getting everything, but generally speaking we were able to get the essentials. The only times that we couldn’t get everything we needed were on weekends or Friday nights, but on weeknights we had no trouble (even with putting in our order 2-3 hours beforehand).
Food pickup
Although we are very comfortable with cooking at home and often opt to do this for budgetary reasons, we did pick up food from a couple of our favorite local restaurants during COVID-19.
Gluten-free pizza we picked up.
Greek food we picked up.
While this came with its own challenges because of all of my dietary restrictions and the fact that we’d be calling ahead to order, having someone jot down my food sensitivities, and then picking it up later, we decided to go with restaurants that we know and trust. I ordered the exact same dishes I’d eaten before in order to make sure that I wouldn’t have any reactions.
In the kitchen
The biggest shift in our home cooking has come from food availability. While it’s been frustrating at times, we’ve also discovered some new favorite foods.
For example, the first time I went to the grocery store during COVID-19, I couldn’t find any eggs except for liquid egg whites. I was hesitant to get them because I didn’t think I’d be a fan, but I really wanted eggs in some form so I picked up a carton. After only a short time I realized that I really did like eggwhite omelets, or even adding them to oatmeal in the morning (which is so much better than it sounds).
Homemade egg white omelet.
Gluten-free oatmeal with egg whites and berries.
We’ve also made more vegetarian meals (with beans), bought frozen berries instead of fresh, and learned to live with a little less cheese (when we couldn’t get any of our favorite, Manchego, for a while).
Final thoughts
Although I’d thought that little had changed in my diet as a Celiac, I’ve realized how many changes we’ve made in order to keep healthy during COVID-19, while also changing up what we eat enough to not get bored. Again, we’ve been extremely fortunate that we even have the option to self-quarantine and we’ve been taking advantage of that as much as we can.
Because my immune system seems to be unusually weak (even for a Celiac) and because we’ve been stuck indoors on weekends, Peter and I have been working hard to get healthy during COVID-19. We figured that anything to boost our health/immune system at this time would be good.
We’ve been trying to eat more produce (also because it’s almost never sold out in stores) and we’ve been deep frying food less often (which was a challenge for me at first). We’ve also been trying to keep active as best as we can – even if most of the time we’d rather be on the couch.
I don’t know how long this pandemic will last or how it will affect things long term, but hopefully, any Celiacs (or non-Celiacs) who are trying to navigate COVID-19 can get something out of my experiences.