Mourning the Food I Used to Eat (and Learning to Live Without It)

When people talk about going gluten-free for medical reasons, like a celiac diagnosis, the focus is usually on what you can and can’t eat. Not so much on how it feels to lose those foods for good.

Because here’s the thing they don’t tell you: it feels like grief.

Not just the “ugh, I miss pizza” kind of grief. The real kind.
The kind where something you loved is gone, and everyone around you keeps enjoying life without even noticing.

At first, I didn’t even think to call it grief. I tragically lost my younger brother when he was just 20 years old, all due to a faulty car part that caused a fatal wreck.

How could you compare losing bread to losing a person? It felt dramatic. Silly, even. But years after both losses—my brother and my ability to eat gluten—I've realized that grief doesn’t care if it was a funeral or a diagnosis. It visits in waves. Quiet, sneaky ones.

At first, it’s everywhere. You’ll see someone bite into a croissant and feel like crying. You’ll smell fresh bread and suddenly feel angry. You’ll turn down an invitation—not because you don’t want to go, but because you’re too tired to explain, again, why you can’t just pick off the croutons.

You’ll try to smile when people say, “I could never give up bread,” as if you had a choice.

The two aren’t equal, of course. Losing my brother shattered me and I will never be the same again. It was a loss too soon for the whole family. The loss of a beloved human being who had been in this world for just 20 short years. And food was… just food.

But in both cases, I learned that time doesn’t erase longing. It just gives you longer stretches of calm between the crashing waves of grief.

In the beginning, everything feels hard. Dining out becomes detective work. Family holidays turn into a game of “Did You Use Separate Utensils?” Even grocery shopping becomes a minefield of label reading and hidden ingredients.

Sometimes, a memory catches me off guard—like seeing his face in a crowd, only to realize it’s someone else. Or catching the smell of fresh bread and remembering the hotel breakfast in France where I had an amazing baguette with butter and jam for breakfast.

It’s not about the thing itself, but what it meant. That moment. That joy. That shared experience. That version of me who didn’t yet know what it meant to lose something so permanent.

But over time, something shifts. Both kinds of grief teach you to carry on.
To build new memories around the absence. To stop trying to recreate the exact flavor of before and start savoring what you can have now.

You start to find foods that do work for you. You learn how to cook differently. You discover that there are still desserts, still dinners with friends, still joy. You find restaurants you trust, brands that don’t disappoint, recipes that feel like home again.

It’s not the same. But it gets better. And then one day, you realize you’ve stopped counting the years since you last ate “real” pizza (just kidding, it’s been 16).

You don’t ever stop wishing you could share one more meal- with your WHOLE family again or with that Little Caesars pizza that was hot and ready. You want one more moment with that loved one at any cost. But eventually, you learn to find beauty in what’s still on the table.

Whether you're grieving someone you love or a part of yourself that changed forever, it’s okay to feel it. And it’s okay to feel it again, years later, over something as small as a piece of bread.

Because grief doesn’t live in logic. It lives in memory. And sometimes, memory shows up when you’re least expecting it—at the table, in the kitchen, in the scent of something warm and familiar.

And if you’re lucky, you can hold that moment gently… then keep going.

Still, there are moments.

Moments where you walk past a bakery window and get hit with that old ache.
Moments at potlucks where you wish you didn’t have to be the one with the special plate. Moments when someone orders takeout without thinking, and you sit quietly with your backup snack.

And those moments don’t mean you’re not grateful. They just mean you’re human. Because sometimes, you don’t want to be the high-maintenance one. You just want to fit in. You want to grab a bite with friends without being the exception. You want one night where you don’t have to ask about the ingredients or explain your condition or apologize for protecting your own health.

And that’s okay.

Grief, even the quiet kind that lives in your lunchbox, doesn’t always go away. But it does soften. It makes room for new things. New traditions. New tastes. New confidence in your ability to live fully—just a little differently.

So if you're in the beginning stages of this journey, let me say this:
You’re allowed to miss what you lost.
You’re allowed to grieve the food, the spontaneity, the normalcy.

But also, you’re allowed to find joy again.
It won’t look the same, but it will still be yours.