Gluten-free blues, or there's no "COLA*" for an increase in the cost of eating :(

I'm not fond of taking pills, so I cheated and skipped my natural nutritional supplements during the recent holidays.  My luck, the minute I started taking them again, my cranky digestive system began misbehaving.  I assumed that this was a classic case of a treatment for one health problem aggravating another--one of the supplements that I'm taking for my osteoporosis has wheat germ as its first ingredient, and I'm supposed to chomp nine of them every day!  So I e-mailed my nutritionist, who advised me to lay off both that supplement and all gluten, including soy sauce (which almost always contains wheat unless it's specifically marking "gluten-free"), for 72 hours, then try just the supplement again and see how my digestive system reacts.  For the record, soy sauce is the only gluten-containing food that I've eaten in roughly the last month (other than the traces of wheat from the lasagna noodles, and--confession time--a miniscule piece of honey cake on Rosh HaShanah/Jewish New Year).

A few hours later, I waltzed into one of my favorite restaurants for a quick bite before shiur (sacred-literature class) and asked whether my favorite quick-and-healthy fleishig/b'sari/meat** dinner, a meal-in-a-bowl soup made with rice noodles, veggies, and chicken, contained soy sauce.  The answer:  Yes.  L  Knowing that a good broth can't be made in five minutes, I moved on to my next favorite fleishig meal, a main course of rice noodles, veggies, and chicken (not quite as healthy because it's stir-fried), and asked that the chef make it without soy sauce.  It was yummy, but . . .  The last time my husband and I went to the same restaurant and both ordered meal-in-a-bowl soups, we paid about $24 total for the two of us.  Last night's meal cost about $21 total for me alone.  I wasn't kidding when I said that I'm not a "cheap date" anymore.

*COLA = cost-of-living adjustment (typically paid by an employer or a government agency)

**For purposes of keeping kosher, "meat" means both red meat and poultry.