12/02/2007

Members of a food allergy campaign group are meeting with MSPs in the Scottish Parliament next week to call for more awareness of the condition.

Campaigners at Coeliac UK will be calling for better training for doctors to help speed up diagnosis and will reveal plans to create a cross-party group for coeliac disease.

The auto-immune disease, which is thought to affect some 70,000 people in the UK, is a form of wheat intolerance which means that the body produces antibodies that attack its own tissues, triggered in most cases by gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye and barley.

Chef and a lifelong coeliac disease sufferer, Craig McAlpine, says there needs to be more awareness of the disease among chefs and caterers too. "I have been to good Edinburgh restaurants and asked for dishes to be changed slightly and the waitress will say the chef says ‘no’,” says Craig, who runs Edinburgh catering firm, Home Cuisine. “Even when I explain I'm not being fussy and I have a medical condition they will go away and then say 'oh all right then'. That's a consistent begrudging response."

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