What are you going to eat, if you go to one of Britain’s top tourist attractions?

The Soil Association recently issued a report which indicated that you’d better pack a picnic, if you want to eat healthily (which, of course, for gluten sufferers, means ‘eat at all’).

Over the last few years, it has got a lot easier to eat out with a coeliac child. However, at many cafeteria type places, the only gluten free things available are a jacket potato, crisps, or occasionally a cake or strawberries. At restaurant type places where there is a child menu, there is usually nothing suitable on that menu, as it is all pizza, sausages, chicken nuggets or fish fingers – which is, I suppose, the point of the Soil Association’s report. We are used to ordering from the adult menu for our coeliac daughter – which, when she was tiny, often caused some consternation … “You do know that fish has bones in, right?”

All of which of course prompts a question or two: why is it assumed that children will only want to eat junk food? And why is it assumed that they should have a different menu from the adult version? It surely couldn’t be too difficult to create and bill for a half-size portion.

And from the coeliac point of view: if there isn’t a choice, there isn’t any fun in having a menu to choose from anyway.