Seven days of being gluten-free is more of a famine than a feast

For those of you who don’t know your gluten from your lactose, it’s the protein found in wheat, barley and rye, which is found in bread, pasta, pizza, cakes and beer etc.

However, it is also often used in a wide range of products, including mayonnaise, soy sauce, sauces, some mustards, sausages and many processed goods.

Coeliac disease is an autoimmune disease caused by intolerance to gluten.

There is no cure or medication, and the only treatment is a strict gluten-free diet for life. National charity Coeliac UK says the average diagnosis period is 13 years and only 10 to 15 per cent of those with the condition are diagnosed, with half-a-million people in the UK undiagnosed.

Left untreated, it can lead to infertility, osteoporosis and bowel cancer.

The gluten-free challenge takes place across the country and finishes on May 20.

It is to raise awareness of the many daily food frustrations encountered by the one in 100 UK people who have coeliac disease.

So how hard can it be?

The features team made a pledge to Coeliac UK, and took up the challenge with a shrug of the shoulders...but was it really that easy?

Planning is key to good diet

Hannah Marsh says...Pasta, pizza, noodles, bagels, muesli – my basic dietary requirements. My gluten-free week was going to be a tough one.

But I was determined to face up to the challenge and my first day went well – in that I managed to avoid the dreaded gluten.

It didn’t go so well in that I skipped lunch, having failed to find anything gluten-free in my cupboards to bring in.

I think it was then that I realised just how tricky the challenge was going to be.

That evening I scoured Waitrose for gluten-free goodies to keep me going, and the first thing I realised was just how expensive their options were.

A small packet of noodles was almost £5 – I couldn’t quite stretch to that and went for rice instead.

And so the gluten-free eating began in earnest, and I did pretty well, substituting noodles for rice in my stir fries, swapping my pasta for gluten- free – not as tasty, but not horrendous at all – and gluten-free bread for my sarnies.

Eating out was a bit of a challenge. I went to a tapas bar in Westfield with my mum, and upon nervously announcing my wheat-free requirements, was presented with a comprehensive list of what I could and couldn’t have on the menu.

It turned out I wasn’t particularly limited in choice, although I did have to gaze longingly at the chewy bread my mum got to mop up with.

The pub was a different scenario. ‘Errrm...I don’t know, I wouldn’t risk it,’ was the answer to my enquiries about fishcakes when I ate at the Alex, in Southend. Being a vegetarian on a gluten-free drive made it even more tricky. A jacket potato turned out to be my only option.

Supermarket shopping proved easier than I’d thought. I could not fault Sainsbury’s for the labelling, with an extensive Free From range and frozen section – gluten-free pizza wasn’t bad at all!

I was proud of myself for sticking to the diet, and it did provide an insight into just how difficult it is to be gluten-free – as it’s in everything! From soups to sauces and everything in between.

Organisation seemed to be the key – it’s tricky to just pick up gluten-free stuff unless you know the right places, and preparation and planning was the best way to approach it.

No health kick from watching my food

Louise Howeson says...Panic did set in when I first decided to go gluten-free for a week.

How would I get by without any bread or pasta for seven days?

However, with a holiday in Crete looming, I did secretly hope the change in diet might allow me to shift a couple of pounds.

What I discovered as I got into the diet is that gluten-free advocates are actually very well catered for.

There are countless varieties of breads, pastas and a wide selection of cakes and biscuits available. This put paid to the idea that I would have to forfeit stodge in my diet.

When I noticed the sugar content in the processed goods it was also questionable whether they were “healthier” alternatives, as I had expected them to be. I did notice that by avoiding gluten it made me make more of an effort to cook from scratch and eat fresh foods and lots of vegetables.

Sunday roasts were still on the menu, minus the Yorkshire puddings (although you can apparently buy these), and pasta dishes were replaced with rice or a jacket potato.

By the end of the week, I did sympathise with the plight of coeliacs, who have an illness that means they are extremely ill if they eat gluten.

However, I could not see any reason for continuing a gluten-free life as I did not feel any health benefit from not eating it for seven days.

Being saucey eater was failure

Neil D’arcy Jones says...I have a confession to make.

With all the best intentions of sticking to my gluten-free diet for a week, I pretty much failed within the first few hours.

And that’s because I got well and truly caught out by what you cannot eat on such a diet.

Like many blokes who like their grub, I foolishly believed gluten-free meant just steering clear of bread, pastas and anything else with wheat in it.

As I now know, it’s all about reading the labels!

Which is why after tucking into my salmon and stir-fried vegetables on the first night, very smug in the fact that I was not only eating healthy, but also gluten-free, I was subsequently asked whether I had cheekily sprinkled some soy sauce over my meal.

“Yeah, what of it?” I replied, rather defensively.

“Well that’s got gluten in it,” I was informed.

Apparently a lot of dressings do. Which is kind of where I fell flat on my weekly task.

My wife, or the guardian of my arteries as she likes to call herself, insists that I break up my weekly dose of cholesterol with as much salad as she can force down my neck.

As dressings are my only recourse to dealing with such culinary strife, I kind of thrive on them.

So my failure is all down to the soy and the dressings...well that’s the excuse I’m sticking to anyway.

Cooking up week-long menu is a tough task

KELLY Buckley says...My boyfriend has coeliac disease, so it is something I’ve been familiar with for some time now.

Whenever he comes over, I’m sure to have in a good choice of gluten-free snacks and bread.

And I’ll always cook from scratch, simply omitting the wrong types of flour, plus replacing soy sauces, pastas and noodles with the gluten-free varieties.

But we don’t live together, and it’s not like I have to do this every day. Would it be such a breeze to keep this lark up for a week?

It started off well, but I quickly found the biggest hardship was the loss of lovely white fluffy bread, or any kind of lovely bread for that matter...as gluten-free bread is not the easiest thing in the world to make.

It is dry and crumbly, often falls apart when you butter it, and can have a strange after-taste, like chewing on an old carpet.

This is something to do with gluten-forming enzymes which help give dough elasticity.

However, on our quest to be gluten-free, supported by lots of companies who were happy to throw products at us to taste test, I did discover a few exceptions. The downside is this bread is not easily available. You can’t just pop to any old baker for fresh stuff.

The result, you end up freezing the bread, therefore having to toast it the whole time even when you want to make a quick sarnie.

I also have a thing for crisps. The features team will tell you 11am is beef Hula Hoop time. Unfortunately, such brands are rarely gluten-free. One morning, when desperate for my elevensies, I had to go for the less-exciting Walkers. If I was a real sufferer of coeliac disease, succumbing to these potato snacks could cause me serious health issues.

One night, I attempted to make pizza. I made my own tomato sauce, determined to educate the boyfriend, who regards pizza almost as alien food.

He gently advised me to get the ready-made bases while I was in the supermarket, explaining how GF flours were no ordinary flours.

But I was having none of it and was determined to make my own dough...I should have listened.

Hours later, my offerings disintegrated through the oven rack, becoming crunchy tomato-covered bark-like things.

But eating out was the most frustrating. More places are starting to include GF dishes, but not enough considering so many people have an intolerance to wheat, even if just an allergy and not the full-blown disease.

All you can get from a quick pub-grub menu is jacket potato and beans, or a thai curry.

And talking of pubs, you can buy gluten-free lagers online at www.gluten-freeshop.co.uk, or at various supermarkets.

For drinking out, try the Squeeze bar, in Leigh, where you can sink a strawberry cider.

Although, I got caught out in another pub, where I sneakily bought a lager, guiltily pretending to the boyfriend it was a cider. But he sniffed me out. Oops. Fail!