STIRRER EDITOR SCOFFS FREE LUNCH

23-11-2006

When your editor was invited to judge a coeliac cookery competition wild horses couldn't have held him back. True, he hadn't got a clueabout coeliac(“something like fennel” he wondered?) but he knew full well what cookery was, and he thoroughly approved of it.

Thus it was that last night I headed off last night to the Maltings in Wolverhampton, a community centre in a forgotten part of town, just off the ring road roughly halfway between Molineux and the old Springfield Brewery.

Janet Foster, who'd invited me, is one of those formidable middle-aged women who would be a power in any environment. Unfortunately for the government, church leaders and big supermarket chains, she just happens to have Coeliac Disease and so has become an ardent campaigner for the cause.

Coeliac, she explained to me, is an intolerance to gluten, which if ignored can become cancerous. The condition is genetic, but is usually dormant until triggered by either stress or another illness. It's generally not a killer, but requires a radical shift in diet (and therefore lifestyle) which can hardly be imagined by those of us who don't have it.

The fact is that glutenis present in the vast majority of food we eat, and is especially common in processed foods. This meant, for example, that when Janet had returned earlier in the day on a Virgin Train from London, she had been unable to eat anything from the buffet bar - sandwiches, pasta, pies and biscuits are all verboten. Instead, it was apples and bananas all the way.

Now this might sound like an encouragement to a healthy lifestyle - and it is. But just imagine how depressing it must be, especially if you travel around a fair bit, to never have the choice of a tasty snack.

Janet compared it to how vegetarians must have fared a couple of decades ago. If you go out for a meal, there's either nothing you can eat at all, or just a single option on the menu. She's now had cards printed in various European languages so that she can order meals abroad.

Things are changing - but only slowly. Costa Coffeehave finally introduceda gluten-free muffin, but only after Starbucks did, and in both cases (as with all gluten-free food) you pay a hefty premium.

The weight of numbers, if nothing else, will eventually bring about a change. Improved methods of assessing thedisease mean that whereas it was previously thought to affect 1 in 2000 of the population, now it's down 1 in 80 -statistics the major food chains can no longer ignore.

Bizarrely, though, you are still banned from joining the police force if you have Coeliac Disease. Apparently it's OK to have tiny women policing riots, but a burly bloke with a food allergy is kept out.

The Catholic church joins in the discrimination by refusing to allow gluten-free Communion wafers. Would Jesus Christ really have minded about the precise recipe followed by those wishing to remember the Last Communion? The Pope seems to think so.

When it comes to ordinary cooking, the effect of removing gluten is to take away the “stickiness” that helps pastry and other foodstuffs stick together. Janet explained that the squashiness of a loaf of bread disappears without this key ingredient, and pastry crumbles more easily.

All I can say on the evidence of the food served last night is that this problem has been readily overcome by some of our local Coeliacs. Along with gourmet cake maker Cristina Dhillon from Wolvo-based Delizia cakes we tucked into gorgeous quiches, tasty biscuits, spicy hummous, and sublime desserts.

I'm glad I don't have the diease - but it's a relief to know I wouldn't starve if I did.

For more information contact www.coeliac.org.uk