I am concerned that there is a general lack of understanding about what it means to be gluten free.

I am concerned that there is a general lack of understanding about what it means to be gluten free.

I visited a local café recently to buy my celiac daughter a gluten free cake as a treat. It was her birthday and I wanted to spoil her. The local café promoted its gluten free products particularly its delightful home cooked gluten free cakes and biscuits.

Are they really 100% gluten free?

The cakes were temptingly displayed but the first thing I observed which made me suspicious was that the gluten free cakes were displayed on a shelf under where a particularly crumby "gluten" cake was displayed. I selected my gluten free cakes together with some "gluten" cakes for the rest of my family.

To my dismay the young lass serving first picked up the "gluten" cake with her tongs and put them into a cake box, and then used the same tongs to pick up the gluten free cakes which she put into the same box as the "gluten" cake.

Horrors of horrors. These so called gluten free cakes were consequently not gluten free at all. Perhaps they never were. Who knows what safeguards were taken to stop them from being cross contaminated with gluten during the baking process.

This young girl had no idea what she was doing. She had not been trained properly about the responsibilities of providing gluten free food. She was rather taken aback when I informed her that the cakes she was serving me were not gluten free and that I no longer required them.

And so I embarked on my journey to teach as many people as I can about what it really means to be gluten free. To teach then the consequences of getting it wrong by not providing 100% gluten free food when you say it is.

I have written 2 e-books- one for the home and one for cafes and restaurants.  I have also written some training webinars and courses. I am in the process of rolling these training programmes out and I am looking for joint venture partners who may be interested in joining me to spread the word.

Contact me at coaching.glutenfreecooking@gmail.com for further information. Or click on the above if you simply want to buy the books and learn what it really means to be 100% gluten free