Let me tell you about a cinnamon roll.
We drove over an hour to get it. There’s a place — fairly well known in the GF world, the kind of place that shows up on lists and gets shared in celiac groups — and we decided to make the trip. Because that’s what you do when you have celiac. You plan around food. You drive for food. You make a whole thing out of going somewhere you’re supposed to actually be able to eat safely and enjoy it.
We got there. The owner was just opening up, over an hour after they were supposed to. Nothing was ready. She mentioned the previous shift hadn’t done any prep — and look, I get it, that happens — but she said it the way you say something you’ve already decided isn’t your problem. No real apology. Just a shrug and a wait.
We waited.
The cinnamon roll cost $10. It did not taste fresh. We didn’t finish it. The cupcakes were still frozen.
We drove home.
That’s the celiac tax. Not just the $10 for a mediocre cinnamon roll. Not just the gas for a two-plus hour round trip. It’s the entire calculation you have to run every single time you want to eat something you didn’t make yourself. Is this place actually safe? Is it worth the drive? What if it’s not good — do we have a backup? There is no backup. There’s never a backup.
Regular people don’t do this math. They just stop somewhere because they’re hungry.
We plan entire outings around food. We call ahead. We read menus online before we leave the house. We ask questions at restaurants that make us feel like we’re being difficult even though we’re just trying to not spend the next three days sick. We pay more, drive farther, wait longer, and still sometimes end up with a frozen cupcake and a shrug from the owner.
And that’s before we even get to the grocery store.
Studies have found that gluten-free products cost on average more than double their conventional equivalents. Not 20% more. Not even 50% more. More than double. For products that are frequently smaller, drier, and held together with a prayer.
Grocery prices overall have gone up more than 25% in the last five years. For everyone. And we started from a higher baseline than everyone else, so that 25% hits differently.
The things that are actually getting cheaper right now — eggs, some dairy — are fine, great, helpful. But the GF bread aisle? The GF pasta? The certified safe specialty items you can’t just swap out for a store brand? Those aren’t getting cheaper. The celiac tax doesn’t really participate in sales.
Here’s what makes me the most tired about it:
The bar is so low and we still get let down.
We’re not asking for luxury. We’re asking for food that won’t make us sick, that tastes like actual food, made by people who take it seriously. That’s the whole ask. And somehow that remains genuinely hard to find at a price that doesn’t make you do a little mental math about whether your health is worth it this week.
(It is. It always is. But the fact that the question exists at all is its own kind of exhausting.)
This is a big part of why I started Fern and Fog. Not to fix the entire GF food economy — I’m not that ambitious on a Tuesday. But to be one place that holds the line. Where the food is actually good. Where nothing is frozen when it shouldn’t be. Where the person making it has celiac and understands that you didn’t drive an hour and pay $10 to be disappointed.
You deserve better than that. We all do.
And honestly? The bar is so low that “actually good” is a radical act.
Fern and Fog is a celiac-safe home and kitchen brand based in Lawrence, Kansas. Small-batch baked goods, spice blends, teas, pantry mixes, and soap and skincare — made by someone who gets it because she lives it.
Fern and Fog 
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