You have celiac disease

By Todd Stadler · Saturday, March 10, 2007 4:02pm

I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but you have celiac disease. I found out by reading CNN.com. There, on the front page, I saw the following disturbing news:

Now, the bad news may not jump out at you at first. "Celiac disease?" you may mutter to yourself, "Isn't that where people are turned into ugly root vegetables?" Well, no. As CNN's home page makes clear, it's a "gluten allergy." Or, as the linked-to article explains, "celiac is not an allergy." But that's not the point.

The point is many Americans have this food-related illness, and many of us don't know it. How many? Apparently, most of us, since 300 million is the population of the United States. Which means you have celiac disease. Sorry. I wish you could have found out a different way.

I realize this will have a bit of an effect on the baking industry, since those with celiac disease (that is, all of us) need to avoid gluten, and gluten tends to be a popular way to bind grain starches together, having supplanted the previous method of epoxying bits of starch together by hand.

But the problem is bigger than just our friends at the local patisserie. According to the Wikipedia article on celiac disease, "it affects approximately 1% of Caucasian populations." Which, if my math is correct, means that there are, let's see ... 30 billion white people in America! When did this happen? Where did they come from? Where are we going to put them all? Will there be mandated adopt-a-Caucasian programs? Will I have to put up white people on our futon?

Anyhow, if there's anything to be taken from this health news, it's that we Americans should stop eating bread and cereals. And we should probably stop procreating. Hope that doesn't put a damper on anyone's plans this week.