1 in 100 people in the UK has coeliac disease. However, research has showed that only 12.5% of
those have been diagnosed equating to over half a million people currently undiagnosed in the
UK.
For people with coeliac disease, eating gluten damages the lining of the gut, which prevents
normal digestion and absorption of food. If a gluten-free diet is not followed, the disease can
ultimately lead to malnutrition, osteoporosis, bowel cancer and also cause infertility problems.
Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye and barley; beer; obvious sources of
gluten include breads, pastas, flours, cereals, cakes and biscuits. It is also often used as an
ingredient in many favourite foods such as fish fingers, sausages, gravies, sauces and soy sauce.
People with coeliac disease can also be sensitive to oats.
The symptoms of coeliac disease range from mild to severe and can vary between individuals. Not
everyone with coeliac disease experiences gut-related symptoms; any area of the body can be
affected.
Symptoms of coeliac disease can include diarrhea, but occasionally constipation, tiredness,
anemia, mouth ulcers, recurrent miscarriages, weight loss (but not in all cases), skin problems,
depression, joint or bone pain, and nerve problems. Sometimes the symptoms can mimic irritable
bowel syndrome that is bloating, abdominal pain and constipation. The only treatment is the life-
long avoidance of ingestion of gluten.
Due to the wide variety of the symptoms of the disease, not only do patients suffer from a
reduced quality of life during the years prior to diagnosis, but also they can be unnecessarily
hospitalised and quite often completely misdiagnosed, and treated with costly drugs.
We have often stated that Coeliac disease is a life-long autoimmune disease, which is triggered
by eating gluten, a type of protein found in wheat, rye and barley.
Untreated it can lead to serious ill health and be life-threatening.
There is currently no cure for the condition; the only treatment is
life-long adherence to a strict gluten-free diet.
Coeliac UK, the national charity for people with coeliac disease, is being proactive and hosting a conference on Wednesday 3rd Decemberin central London announcing the latest findings in coeliac disease research including progress on the development of a possible vaccine for the condition.
Research at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Australia has identified the toxic elements of gluten creating the potential for a vaccine therapy to suppress or prevent gluten toxicity. The research indicates that there are only a few dominant peptides in the gluten protein that trigger the autoimmune response in people with coeliac disease which makes the creation of a vaccine easier.
The lead researcher stated “We have developed a peptide-based therapeutic vaccine based on the dominant problem T-cell epitopes of gluten. The “vaccine” has the potential to treat about 80% of people with the disease. In common with traditional desensitization therapy for allergy, peptide-based therapeutic vaccines administered in many small doses over a course of injections could induce immune tolerance not only to the selected gluten fragments but also suppress the toxicity of other toxic gluten components,”.
Further research findings will be provided at the conference identifying a new genetic risk factor for coeliac disease and, following continued research, discovered an additional seven gene regions implicated in causing the condition. Of the nine coeliac gene regions now known, four of these are also predisposing factors for type 1 diabetes. Their research sheds light not only on the nature of coeliac disease, but on the common origins of both diseases.
Other speakers at the conference will be highlighting advancements in testing of gluten in food, the nutritional content of a gluten-free diet and the need for point of care testing in order to help increase the number of people diagnosed.
For some people, food allergies can be very serious. One bite of a cookie with ground peanuts can cause a life-threatening emergency in someone with a peanut allergy, while just the smell of fish can make a highly sensitive person feel ill.
Although these are extreme reactions, it’s no wonder many people worry about food allergies. Unfortunately, because of a lack of good information about severe food allergies, many people are restricting their diet unnecessarily. One allergist found that, out of 23 people who thought they had a food allergy, approximately 4 actually did. Some of those who didn’t have allergies were avoiding so many foods they had become sick and malnourished. Don’t guess. If you suspect you have a food allergy, have it properly diagnosed by a doctor, then obtain nutritional advice from a registered dietitian.
What is a Food Allergy?
People with food allergies have an unusually sensitive immune system. For some reason, swallowing a protein from a particular food causes the person’s own antibodies to rush into action to attack the foreign substance. This starts a chain reaction of chemical changes which cause swelling and irritation in certain parts of the body.
Food allergies are most common in young children. Many infants become sensitive to foods, such as cow’s milk, soy and eggs during their first year of life. Fortunately, most infants outgrow these sensitivities in a year or two.
However, a child with an allergy to peanut or shellfish will not outgrow it. In fact, the symptoms may become more severe each time the child is exposed.
What is a Food Intolerance?
Food can cause problems for people in ways that do not involve the immune system. For example, people with lactose intolerance don’t have enough of the enzyme lactase to digest the sugar or lactose in milk. People with celiac disease cannot digest wheat protein. Other people have trouble with caffeine, chili peppers, horseradish or hot sauce. These food- related problems are called “food intolerances” not food allergies.
It is important to know the difference between food intolerances and food allergies. A person with a milk allergy must avoid all milk protein, even the small amount found in a slice of bread, whereas a person with a lactose intolerance may be able to eat some cheese and drink certain modified milk.
Facts About Food Intolerances
· Milk, eggs, peanuts, nuts, soy, wheat, and fish are responsible for 95% of all actual food allergies. It is rare for people to have two or more food allergies.
· It is usually not necessary to avoid an entire food family. For example, people who are allergic to lobster can often tolerate shrimp and crab. Even children with a life-threatening peanut allergy are rarely sensitive to other legumes, such as soybeans and lentils.
Just read about a restaurant in Kingston-upon-Thamess which caters for gluten intolerances. Apparently they produce gluten-free pizza and pastas along with “normal” ones. The kitchen staff are trained to ensure no cross-contamination happens. It is called Brushetta Restaurant and it’s located on 141 London Road, not too far from the main shopping precinct at Kingston.
The restaurant also serves non-gluten free food. The manager, Guilia Zardetto, is originally from Italy, and has worked in the catering business for over 10 years. The chefs at Bruschetta have been trained at reputable Italian Cookery Schools. They are trained in all aspects of handling gluten-free foods and making their own gluten-free pizza bases for the restaurant.
Guilia hopes to open more restaurants throughout the UK in the future. I hope she does.
For now, we stick with the one in Kingston-up-Thames.
The address is 141 London Road, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey KT2 6NH. Tel : 0208 546 9328.
If anyone gets to eat there before I do, let me know how the restaurant is and what your experience was like!
Long, long ago, man was a simple hunter/gatherer and he enjoyed this. His diet consisted of fruits, nuts, perhaps tubers and the occasional feast of meat. But eventually, he learned to cultivate plants, and the agricultural revolution began. Soon, the hunter/gatherer way of life was replaced by domestication of crops and animals which had implications for our diet.
As habits changed, some unanticipated problems arose. The human gut had developed, over more than 2 million years, into a sophisticated organ that could tolerate food antigens that were staples of the human diet over hundreds of thousands of years. But how would it react to new antigens, suddenly appearing in the diet? He may like the food but would it like him? The agricultural revolution of the Neolithic period generated a whole battery of food antigens previously unknown to man, including protein from cow, goat, and donkey milk, as well as birds’ eggs and cereals. Most individuals were able to adapt. Among those who could not, food intolerances appeared and celiac disease was born.
Some 8,000 years after its onset, celiac disease was identifed and named. This was the begining of better understanding. A clever Greek physician named Aretaeus of Cappadocia, living in the frst century AD, wrote about The Coeliac Affection.” In fact, he named it “koiliakos” after the Greek word “koelia” (abdomen). His description: “If the stomach be irretentive of the food and if it pass through undigested and crude, and nothing ascends into the body, we call such persons coeliacs.
During the 1980’s it became increasingly clear that Celiac Disease could be associated with other conditions, mostly autoimmune disorders such as type 1 diabetes, but also some syndromes such as Down. It was also apparent that Celiac Disease was changing patterns of presentation, becoming less an intestinal disorder, and more a variety of extra-intestinal symptoms and signs.
In the late 80’s, a large multicenter Italian study that I conducted demonstrated that by relying on strict clinical and laboratoristic criteria, a correct diagnosis of Celiac Disease could be reached in 95% of cases by limiting to the one initial biopsy, and new diagnostic guidelines were published in 1990 by ESPGHAN, guidelines that stand to this day. After 1990,Celiac Disease was increasingly accepted as an example of an autoimmune disease, associated with a specifc gene (either DQ2 or DQ8) and the missing autoantigen was fnally identifed in the enzyme tissue transglutaminase. At long last, there was universal acceptance that celiac disease is an autoimmune condition whose trigger (gluten) and autoantigen (tissue transglutaminase) are known.
Last Christmas, my husband surprised me with a waffle maker. It’s a German-manufactured (Tchibo) one, with the ability to make 2 waffles at a time. Each waffle sub-divides into 5 heart-shaped waffles. I’ve experimented with many gluten and gluten free waffle recipe dishes over the past few months.
My first attempt with a gluten free waffle recipe was to take a recipe similar to the breakfast waffles made with wheat flour, only substituting the flour with a gluten-free flour or baking mix. I find buckwheat and rice flour works well for this. However, you do need to add baking powder and you need to ensure they are fluffy by beating the egg whites separately and folding them in as the last step. You will also need to adjust the amount of milk to add. Gluten-free flours tend to absorb milk more.
This gluten free waffle recipe takes 15 minutes to prepare, and if you have a double-waffle iron like mine, it will not take long to make a delicious, warm breakfast with this gluten free waffle recipe! .
The Ingredients are :
- 3 eggs, separated
- 400ml milk
- 225g gluten free flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 3 teaspoons sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 4 teaspoons vegetable oil
A second gluten free waffle recipe I tried was one adapted from a gluten-free pancake recipe from Thailand. It was made with rice flour, coconut milk, an egg, some sugar, baking powder and a pinch of salt. Again you need to beat the egg whites separately so as to make the waffles lighter, and you do need to add baking powder to ensure a light, airy texture to the waffles.
A third recipe – again adapted from a gluten free pancake recipe is the following : Mix 1 cup rice flour, 1/2 cup soya flour and 1/2 cup corn meal, 1 tbsp baking powder. In a separate bowl, beat together 1 egg and 1.5 cups milk and 2tbsp vegetable oil. Mix the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients and cook immediately.
Another gluten-free waffle recipe is to take a gluten-free pancake or muffin mix – many supermarkets and health food shops stock these. Some are made with buckwheat flour or rice flour; and some have added ingredients such as apple and cinnamon, or maple syrup. You may need to experiment a bit with the mixes and vary the ingredients to your gluten free waffle recipe a bit, such as less liquid, more baking powder and fluffing up the whites into the batter.
As long as you persevere with the above gluten free waffle recipes, you will find the waffles that suit your tastes and lifestyle. I hope the above gluten free waffle recipe ideas entice your taste buds to start trying!