If you have a wheat allergy or coeliac disease how do you cope with Holy Communion?

The Catholic doctrine believes that the wafer and wine taken at Holy Communion are the body and blood of Christ, and therein lies a major problem for someone with a wheat or gluten allergy.

I am of course being facetious. Eating out 99% of the time on a wheat free diet sucks!

Visiting friends just before Christmas we went to a local hostelry for lunch. The menu consisted of fried, battered or breaded foods, burgers, fries & lasagne. Even the salads came ready made with the croutons on, and a “well we could pick them off for you”. I don’t think so.

We have been contacted with some interesting information from Josie about her son's tentative diagnosis of petit mal, medication issues and subsequent changing to a wheat free diet.

Does anyone else have any experience of this? Or any comments they would like to add?

So Canadian news reported that a scientist at the University of Alberta has discovered a way to turn the dregs from brewing beer into a sweetener. Using the grain waste left over, which is often sold as cheap animal feed, the process can now create xylitol, a sugar substitute.

Now scientists are getting excited that this new discovery will have environmental benefits as well as financial ones. But what about the health ones?

Whilst the US Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act 2004 (FALCPA), that came into force 1 January 2006, has got to be a good thing, I’m starting to worry that there won’t be much left for people with food allergies to eat based on reading the packaging.

This is something that I’ve blogged about before, manufacturers covering their butts by stating that everything they make MAY contain or have traces of blah blah blah.

We were contacted by Allie about Tesco's habit of stocking gluten free products for a short while, then removing them again (just when people have got used to using them), does anyone else have this same question or comments?

First let me start with an apology to all those people that religiously read the wheat blog. Sorry there hasn’t been one for a while but wheat-free.org has been relocating offices.

Okay, so I hear you say “what’s so time consuming about moving?” Well we’ve actually moved 4,400 miles give or take a mile or three. So it took a bit more than a few cardboard boxes in the back of a lorry.

But wheat-free.org is alive and well and ready to get back into the saddle as it were. So thank you for bearing with us, and welcome to 2006. We do still have staff in the UK, so don’t worry, we won’t be missing out on all those UK titbits, product reviews etc.

Ahhhhh Christmas. Holly, the tree, tinsel, decorations, roast turkey, Christmas pudding, Christmas cake, mince pies and mistletoe. Hang on, rewind that a bit, Christmas pudding, Christmas cake and mince pies, hmmmmmmm now here I see a problem.

Christmas is meant to be the time of goodwill to all men (and women), a time of giving, receiving, sharing and general merriment. A time of binge eating and drinking and so much wheat in evidence you’d think you were living in a grain silo.

It’s food in the loosest sense of the word. Having recently had to endure the culinary disasters foisted on me as gluten free meals on my flights to and from Canada, I can only think that the caterers preparing the gluten free meals have absolutely no idea of what they were doing, or don’t care, or both.

For a start wheat free meals are not an option, you have to have gluten free or nothing. Which already puts my back up, and my suspicions, because some items that are gluten free have wheat in them that has had the gluten removed. So not safe for someone with a wheat allergy.

Last month The Guardian did an article on Paula Radcliffe, remarking on what a high maintenance woman she was, and suggesting that she was crossing the line between normal and nutty and on the slippery slope to 'celebrity-itis'.

I’m guessing that there’s no one single family where every family member has a wheat allergy. I may of course now be proved wrong, but the chances of it happening must be greater than of me winning the lottery top prize.

But indulge me if you will, and work on the premise that virtually every household that contains someone with a wheat or gluten allergy, also contains someone without any problems with wheat or gluten (unless of course it’s a single occupation household).

Have you looked at the sugar content of most wheat and gluten free products lately? Some of these products are so sweet that they make my teeth ache. What is it with manufacturers of minority group foods?

Why do they think that just because we have an allergy to wheat or gluten we’ll be so desperate to eat cakes and cookies that we don’t mind eating enough sugar to make Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory look like a health spa.

I’m sure that I’m not the only one out there that likes Quorn and finds it a really good alternative to use for meat free cooking. And that’s what makes the recent changes to their nutrition information so irritating.

If there’s one chocolate bar that I do miss it’s Twix. Thick rippled chocolate coating a crunchy biscuit topped with thick caramel, ummmmmm lovely. I can remember back to those days when I used to be able to eat them, too many of course as my waistline would have attested at the time, but who’s counting now.

Most of our dedicated readers of the wheat-free blog have probably thought that we've got bored with writing it and given up, well in actual fact our wheat-free blogger has been doing their public duty, and serving on Jury Service.

And this brings us nicely onto a bit of a rant. Our wheat-free blogger has dutifully attended court each day, and the jury room is quite luxurious, low soft chairs, vending machines, spotless 'facilities' and a canteen.