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Comment by Buttons840 | Hacker News Reader

Several months ago I learned I have celiac disease (the "no gluten" autoimmune disease) and I also have extremely high LDL cholesterol (~200 LDL-C), so I've removed all gluten and almost all saturated fat from my diet. At this point I don't believe I can eat out anymore, and yeah, it sucks. So many old friendships were maintained by a lunch meeting every 6 months. Eating is just the default social activity everyone participates in. I don't know a replacement for that.

The standard American diet lives up to its acronym. It's sad that a single food allergy and a goal to follow dietary guidelines eliminates almost all fast food and resturaunt food. Hell, at this point I believe anyone simply wanting to follow saturated fat guidelines is excluded from eating out.

Nobody has to die in order for you to find yourself eating alone every meal.

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I somehow started inviting friends and meetings for walks instead of meals.

It started because I was tired of sitting all day. And because I was connected to a VC and had meetings where I could dictate the terms, I’d let people know that I didn’t want to sit and see a PowerPoint. I wanted to walk along the beach (near my office) and walk.

Now I also have a few friends I do this with. Friends I don’t see often. I find walking to be better for conversation, health, and just more fun.

Not sure if this is possible. I live and work by the beach and near a lot of parks. But I strongly recommend at least offering it. There must be other people sick of sitting all the time.

If your friends know of your condition, perhaps during the warmer months instead of meeting at a restaurant you can meet at a park nearby - they can grab some takeout and you can bring something that meets your needs.

It's relatively easy to find "gluten free" these days (though that varies on how actually gluten free it is) but the saturated fats are going to be harder to miss.

I've had similar experience. I found that I went through a kind of mourning for my old life for a while. It's a huge adjustment.

It also eats up a huge amount of time - reading labels for hidden ingredients, trying to come up with a meal that you can make that doesn't include the bad things etc. It became very isolating. Eventually I decided I had to figure out a middle ground.

I will meet people for "lunch" and just have coffee, or whatever I can tolerate from the menu. I have people over more often because I know what I cook won't make me sick. I went back to eating out - it takes a while to figure out/trust restaurants you can eat at. There will be mistakes along the way.

Good luck - I hope it gets easier for you.

Find restaurants that are celiac-safe. You may find it safer to pick cuisines that naturally don't include wheat, than to get the gluten-free option at a regular gluten-y restaurant.

South-east Asian cooking in general doesn't naturally include wheat or other grains and is usually a safe option.

A good portion of Chinese and Japanese dishes work too. Soy is gluten-free but dark soy is 50-50.

While soy is gluten free, most soy sauce brands are not..

Does keto diet work for you? Based on your description I guess it would. Some restaurants offer some dishes which work for keto diet, but its still not widespread.

It may, but unlike most omission diets, celiac disease requires strict cross-contamination avoidance requiring special considerations in the prep area (or better yet, a separate prep area). It's difficult for restaurants to provide safe gluten-free meals but in general I've noticed the options are much better than they were a decade ago.

Just someone handling flour in the same space will contaminate a celiac's food, a Keto person would never notice.

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