AS I’VE mentioned before in this column, I have coeliac disease; this is an autoimmune condition where my body can’t process gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, rye and triticale. I was diagnosed late in life, at the age of 50, although I suspect I’d been ill for years before doctors finally identified what was wrong.
I was fortunate; my cousin Ann, who herself has had the condition since childhood, noticed my dramatic weight loss and advised me to get tested. Unlike those who suffer from more serious food allergies, my symptoms thankfully disappeared once I began a gluten-free diet.
So long as I stick to my diet, my condition is more an inconvenience than a serious illness. I never eat out without checking the restaurant has a gluten-free option, and I always make a point of mentioning to staff I’m coeliac. I do this because many people who aren’t coeliac are now choosing to follow a gluten-free diet for its supposed health benefits.
For those of you who have done this, I’d point out recent research has found absolutely no benefit in such a diet unless you’ve a gluten intolerance; in fact, it may be detrimental.
Thankfully, I’ve only accidentally eaten gluten on a couple of occasions. Once was while on tour a couple of years ago; I was travelling to play a sold-out show at the Millennium Forum in Derry. Having eaten lunch in a restaurant which advertised a gluten-free option, I suddenly felt ill while doing a sound check in the theatre, and knew immediately I’d eaten something containing gluten.
I won’t go into gory details of the symptoms but let's just say my body reacts to gluten as if it were a poison and purges.
Believing in the old adage that the show must go on, I managed to struggle through with the help of my good friend, and fellow comic, Terry McHugh. He stood at the side of the stage holding a plastic bin – just in case. Thankfully it wasn’t needed and I promised myself I’d never eat out again on the day of a show.
A more serious incident happened on a flight I took to the US. As always, I’d let the airline know I was coeliac and had ordered a gluten-free meal. Unfortunately, somehow, I was given the wrong meal by mistake.
Having been gluten-free for a number of years by this time, my sensitivity was such that I quickly began to feel unwell and was unable to finish the meal. Within 20 minutes I was in the toilet being violently ill, and upon returning to my seat, I practically fainted.
I came round with three air stewardesses staring at me anxiously. I must have looked pretty bad as they suggested getting the pilot to radio ahead and have an ambulance waiting when we arrived. Thankfully I hadn’t eaten too much and recovered enough to not need medical help.
The tragic story this week of 15-year-old Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who died after eating a food she was allergic to, brought home how fortunate I am that coeliac disease is not immediately life-threatening.
Natasha also fell ill on a plane, travelling from London to Nice, in 2016. With multiple food allergies, Natasha became ill after eating a baguette containing sesame that she’d bought from a Pret a Manger outlet at Heathrow airport. As there was no allergen labelling on the baguette, there was no way she could have known it contained sesame.
There was no requirement for Pret a Manger to provide allergen labelling on its sandwiches because legislation regarding food produced in-store, apparently aimed at small outlets, states it is sufficient for general allergen warnings to be displayed in the shop, rather than on packaging,
Dr Sean Cummings, the acting senior coroner at Natasha’s inquest, expressed frustration at this anomaly, saying: “It seems on the face of it a bit strange that a local sandwich shop can benefit from that regulation... but that an organisation that sold... 218 million items (a year) could also benefit from that regulation... A cynic might think it was almost a device to get round regulation relating to information on food allergens.”
The message is simple – comprehensive mandatory allergen labelling is an imperative and should be treated as such by government. But it isn’t just government, it’s everyone’s responsibility to take food intolerance/allergies seriously.
We who suffer didn’t chose our condition and rely on food producers, restaurants and cafes to understand that eating the wrong food can for us can be a matter of life and death.
