celiac

Allergy Friendly Cooking with Sainsbury’s

SainsburysSo this is exciting!

Today I get to leave rural Cheshire and travel to London to meet a variety of other bloggers… some with food intolerances, others with a deep interest in food generally. We’ve all been invited by Sainsbury’s to their headquarters to cook an allergy friendly meal with the help of the Sainsbury’s Try Team. Some of us will be cooking sweet things; others will be cooking savoury. And then we get to eat what we’ve cooked!

How much fun is that?

I’ll let you know how it goes, but in the meantime, here are some of the other bloggers I’m looking forward to meeting tonight. Do go and explore their sites…

Claire at Fashion By Student

Pippa at The Intolerant Gourmet

Molly at The Particular Kitchen

Robin at Source it, Cook it, Eat it

Nicola at Nicola F.A.B

Lorna Yates – Lorna on Twitter

Tor at Fab Frocks

Paul at Paul’s Cooking…

Mowie at Mowielicious

Dena at Beautiful. Active. Nourished

Anne at Anne’s Kitchen

By |February 23rd, 2010|Events, Living Gluten Free|1 Comment
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Diagnosed Doctor Supports Coeliac Petition

Dr Chris Steele at 10 Downing StDr Chris Steele handed in a petition to 10 Downing Street today, calling on the UK Government to help improve the diagnosis of coeliac disease – a condition with which he has just been diagnosed.

8,783 people (yes, including me – did you sign?) are asking the Government to find the half-million people in the UK at risk from undiagnosed coeliac disease by introducing a target for diagnosis to the GP contract. The idea is that setting targets changes behaviour (just as in any management situation) so if GPs have to list how many people they’ve diagnosed this year, they will actively be looking for the disease.

I’m not sure whether the idea is that they get paid on results, as they used to in some cases for vaccinations (and may still, for all I know), but that really doesn’t matter for the individual who is diagnosed…

It is estimated that 1 in 100 people in the UK have coeliac disease, but that only 1 in 8 have been diagnosed. As you probably know, untreated coeliac disease can lead to infertility, multiple miscarriages, osteoporosis and bowel cancer – and the treatment is a gluten free diet.

Dr Chris Steele MBE is one of our television doctors (on This Morning, which I catch at my hairdressers every six weeks or so – I do remember that he was ill at some point before Christmas), and has been Ambassador of the charity for the last three years. He says:

“I have supported the need to raise awareness of diagnosing coeliac disease for many years but never thought that I would […]

By |February 2nd, 2010|Campaigns, Diagnosis, Living Gluten Free|2 Comments
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Is it Christmas or a rebrand?

We went to Sainsburys this weekend to pick up – among other things – some gluten free pizza. Dietary Specials Pepperoni – my daughter’s current favourite.

Dietary Specials pepperoni pizzaWe found that the Free From frozen section had been moved. That’s fine: it was still clearly marked up, and (as you know!) supermarkets are always rearranging things to shake us up and help us notice new things.

But there was still no sign of the pizza we’d come in for, and not even a label on the (fairly empty) shelves to show where it should be. Since this was the second visit we’d made to get some with no luck, I thought I’d ask.

Customer Services was, as always, very friendly, but didn’t really know what had happened to the pizza. I was offered two explanations:

1. The Christmas stock was coming in.

Well, yes. I understand that Sainsburys make a lot of money over Christmas, and need different stock items. But it’s a little hard on someone who has a restricted diet anyway to have it further limited because other people want a wider choice. Plus: the amount of freezer space dedicated to Free From was the same.

2. The product was marked as ‘on hold’, which, it was suggested, probably meant that it was being rebranded and marked up as being gluten free.

Hmm. A rebrand, possibly (in which case why were the margherita pizzas still available?). But ‘being marked up as gluten free’? Nice try, but this is a dedicated gluten free product. It already says it is gluten free.

I wasn’t offered the opportunity to put in a request slip to have it […]

By |November 16th, 2009|Christmas, Living Gluten Free, Shopping Gluten Free|2 Comments
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Allergy Alert: Bernard Matthews Chunky Tikka Turkey

Sigh. Another alert.

Farmfoods and Morrisons have withdrawn certain batches of Bernard Matthews Chunky Tikka Turkey because of “incorrect gluten free labelling and the presence of wheat”. Apparently higher levels of wheat gluten than expected were detected on testing.

Product Details:

Chunky Tikka Turkey, 110g. Clear plastic pack.
Date codes – Use by 14, 15, 16, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 29 and 30 September 2009. 3, 4 and 7 October 2009.

If you’ve bought this product, don’t eat it but take it back to the place you bought it from. (Actually, of course, if you bought anything with a use by date before today, you probably have eaten it already).

More information on www.food.gov.uk

By |September 25th, 2009|Alerts, Living Gluten Free|0 Comments
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Love those Gluten Free Gingerbread Men

lovemore gingerbread menIs it just me?

Am I the only one ever reduced to tears in the free from section in the supermarket?

It happened again, just last week, when I found Lovemore Gingerbread Men in Sainsbury’s. As you can see from the image, it’s a box containing four charming gingerbread men, some dairy-free chocolate beans (looking very like Whizzers – less colourful than Smarties, which as you know are not gluten free) and a couple of tubes of writing icing. Not really the kind of thing to make a grown woman cry, is it?

Those poor supermarket staff. Perhaps they should hand round a box of tissues on the shelves in the free from sections, as they used to in the cinema during romantic films when I was a teenager…

I bought them. You know I always buy these things, partly because we like to try them, and partly to encourage the supermarkets and the manufacturers by demonstrating that Yes there IS a demand for these things.

And there is a demand.

Oh yes. Even though my coeliac daughter is now approaching 14, she was thrilled. She carefully decorated each gingerbread man in turn, and ate them all, except for a gingerbread leg she gave me to taste. Like the chocolate fingers we found in the summer, this is exactly the kind of thing I wish we’d had 10 years ago.

They are expensive, of course, but I’d buy them again for a party or for a special treat. The gingerbread itself is tasty; not as gingery as I like it, but then, I’m not the target market, am I? Well, I am, of course, being […]

By |September 16th, 2009|Gluten Free Finds, Living Gluten Free, Shopping Gluten Free|0 Comments
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