More Gluten-Free News…
An article in today’s Guardian newspaper reviews some of the new, high-quality products on the market for those with unusual diets. The reference to people suffering ‘allergies’ is irksome at first but I was relieved to find that they distinguished between coeliac disease and other ‘less serious’ conditions in the first paragraph. It’s good the media are keeping awareness of coeliac disease in the public domain and emphasising its seriousness as a medical condition. There is also a good discussion in the online edition that tackles the issue of managing family food in the context of dietary limitations.
The article also mentions the new ‘Genius’ range of gluten-free bread, which has caused quite a stir in coeliac circles. It is definitely one of the best gluten-free breads out there. Even when I bake at home from scratch, it is exceptionally difficult to replicate the freshness of ‘normal’ bread. Most gluten-free bread recipes result in a dry, crumbly texture that tends to take on a hard texture after a day, much more quickly than bread with gluten does. This Genius bread is much better and does retain its freshness for longer, especially if you store it in the fridge. All a far cry from the days of brick-like, vacuum-packed lumps of bread-like substance coeliacs used to have to tolerate!
Will write soon with my own product reviews and recipes…
An Auspicious Sign…
While doing my usual daily scan of the New York Times, I noticed this article on ‘The High Price of C(o)eliac Disease’ that looks at the US healthcare debate from the perspective of those whose diseases don’t require any prescription drugs but can be managed purely through dietary change.
An auspicious sign for the start of my blog!
It’s a good article and gives a fair synopsis of the coeliac condition but I feel it’s a little out of date relative to my experience, possibly because it is focused on the US. When I was diagnosed just over 10 years ago, it would certainly have been true to say that ‘(G)luten-free bread is more expensive than traditional bread and often less palatable. And that holds for many gluten-free items.’
My diet now, however, is easier to manage than it’s ever been. That’s one of the reasons that I decided to start this blog as there are now so many good gluten-free product ranges out there and most of them are available in mainstream supermarkets. Sainsbury’s, Tesco’s and Asda now all stock gluten-free products like Trufree, Doves Farm and the Tesco FreeFrom range. This makes gluten-free shopping a hell of a lot easier than it used to be. I can still remember going to the pharmacist to buy my first gluten-free loaf of bread, a loaf that bore a strong resemblance in texture to reinforced concrete and smelt horribly of some synthetic preservative.
Thank God those days are over and coeliac foodies are no longer locked in a dietary prison. The diet is still more expensive but not prohibitively so. I find that cutting down on meat has saved me more money than buying gluten-free could ever add to my bill.
About This Blog
It’s become fashionable these days to be a ‘weird eater’ with fad diets taking off in all directions. In fact, a social obsession with food and its provenance and pros and cons is very much a trend on the up in all ways recently. We coeliacs have been weird eaters for a long time, however, or at least since the late 1940s when the Dutch paediatrician, Dr Willem Dicke, first discovered that this strange disease that had been around for centuries and caused malnutrition, a swollen abdomen and anaemia, could be treated by removing wheat (and as we found out later, gluten) from the diet.
Coeliacs are lucky in a way as, unlike IBS sufferers or the nut allergic, our disease is well researched with medical consensus on its seriousness and a 100% foolproof way to treat it. The only slight problem is that it involves a limited diet – and if you’re a coeliac foodie like me, then you have to be inventive in how you enjoy your food. There are so many foodie treats – from treacle tart to brioche to stir-fry noodles to couscous – that seem to be off limits. It’s enough to make a foodie give up hope.
Not to worry: this blog is about finding new recipes or restaurants or replacement ingredients so that coeliacs can enjoy their food, regardless. It’s not just for coeliac foodies either. Hopefully this blog will be useful for anyone who wants to stay healthy and still maintain their foodie interests. The focus is on ‘how to eat like a normal person’. Staying gluten-free doesn’t mean that you have to sit eating rice cakes in a corner while everyone around you has pizza and beer. Equally being healthy doesn’t mean just sticking to a diet of fruit salad and vegetable stew.
I’d like to take the neurosis and the hype out of the gluten-free diet and provide people with useful, easy recipes and tips that are accessible for anyone. More than anything most of us coeliacs just want to fit in with the ‘normals’ and not be singled out for our gastro-intestinal peculiarities! I hope this blog will be a good place for foodies – coeliac or otherwise – to come and find new food ideas. Moreover, even if no-one ever reads it, it’ll be a handy place for me to store my recipes and hone my skills as a restaurant critic…
