The Cambridge News in its Saturday Living supplement a couple of weeks ago had a 2-page interview with a mum of a late diagnosed coeliac boy. It was the usual - this is a disease, hospital visit, tests, expensive, prescription food, etc., etc.
Having diagnosed my gluten sensitivity in the early 80s due to reading an article by Leon Chaitow in Here's Health I soon found out, as my husband also commented, that we were all eating better. 5-a-day, all meats, fish, eggs, cheese, fruit, vegetables, avocados, etc., etc., are gluten free. Stone Age diet.
There were none of these awful gluten-free breads then. I have eaten rice cakes ever since - cheese on rice cakes, sardines on rice cakes, beans on rice cakes - yum! My husband is happy to join me in these.
My elder son found out he was better on a gluten free diet and his two children (not with the sensitivity), are happy to sometimes have rice cakes. It is not a problem.
I am puzzled by the 'food on prescription'. It makes the kids think they are ill. Once on the diet usually all symptoms disappear.
I react to prawns but don't get free lamb chops! I just avoid them.
A local hotel will give me a 'non-bread sandwich' - the sandwich contents with crisps not bread! On a cruise the waiter would serve my gravy free dinner whispering 'for special one' in my ear!
I contacted the local Cambridge coeliac branch mentioned in the article as they are having a food fair and mention cakes. I have been to the Newmarket version of this fair and been shocked that it is stall after stall of breads, cakes, etc. - no fresh food. I have written to Coeliac UK about it.

One of my favourite alternatives is made with Natco cornmeal from the Indian section of Tesco mixed it with milk, made it into patties and fried in butter. Serve with jam and perhaps cream. Yum. AAA published this in their tips section. Children could make it.
Another thing I enjoy is the Mexican taco shells – several in a packet, quick filling is a tin of ratatouille but better to make your own. I don't like the refried beans though!

Or get a few stone age 'old friends'...

This may be an effective way to make the need for special foods and diets obsolete, thanks to a few tiny microorganisms that will live happily in the human gut and deliver on-going natural 'treatment' internally to reverse the immunological imbalance that causes coeliac disease.

A preliminary Australian study (http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...tion=australia) has already found that patients with a small number of tiny hookworm in their intestines fared dramatically better when exposed to gluten than those without any 'little friends'.

Researchers in several centres around the world are urgently seeking the secrets of the hookworm's success, with a view to creating new drugs that might have the same effect but, in the meantime, one can get one's own team of time-served immune technicians from Autoimmune Therapies (http://autoimmunetherapies.com/).

I did this myself to treat my severe food allergies and intolerance, and it's been a huge success (http://www.foodsmatter.com/allergy_i...tolerance.html). And I've found that there are no long-term adverse side effects with the real thing, unlike with pharmaceutical treatments.

I'm now firmly of the opinion that many of us need to have a few of these little guys in our guts in order to maintain optimum health. We had evolved with them for millions of years before we began our modern love affair with hygiene, and effectively banished them. Consequently, we in the West are now all 'helminth-deficient' and in need of appropriate helminth replacement therapy (http://www.foodsmatter.com/natural_m...c_therapy.html) to regain immunological equilibrium.