Call To Scrap Gluten-Free Food Prescriptions
This article on the BBC’s web site, talks about a call in a learned journal for gluten-free prescriptions to be stopped on the NHS.
I have had gluten-free prescriptions in the past, but quite frankly, living where I do now, to take them would be a waste of my time and the NHS’s money.
So what specific gluten-free foods do I buy?
1. A few ginger cakes from Waitrose, as I find they help my dry throat. I can’t make cakes any more and to be fair, I haven’t got any cake tins.
2. I usually have one loaf of Genius bread a week, which I can buy from any number of outlets locally, like Waitrose, Sainsbury or the Co-op.
3. I’m not much of a biscuit person, but I probably eat one pack a fortnight. I actually prefer genius toast with Benecol and jam.
4. As you see from this blog, I do buy the odd ready-meal like the venison from Marks and Spencer. But these are the standard product.
5. I buy some of the EatNatural gluten-free breakfast cereal. I get through about a packet a week.
6. I do buy a specialist gluten-free beer called Celia over the Internet.
If I take out the beers, which are £2.10 each, I probably spend under ten pounds a week on specific gluten-free food. Although of course, I do spend quite a bit more on quality fish, meat, vegetables and fruit.
If I had to get gluten free food on prescription, it would mean going to the surgery and back. Probably I’d walk, which would be good for me, but I have better things to do with my time. I’d then have to go to the pharmacy to collect it.
So for people like me, this would be no inconvenience at all.
Obviously, for those on a very limited income, it might be more of a problem.
But the real key to a successful gluten-free diet is to eat lots of natural foods like meat, fish, fruit and vegetables. None of these cost more if you are a coeliac, as they’re all naturally gluten free.
The expensive gluten-free items to buy are bread, biscuits, cakes, sandwiches and beer. But it could be argued that most people eat too much of these anyway.
If gluten-free food was stopped on the NHS, the only people who would complain, would be the chattering classes, who are probably allergic to nuclear power, HS2, fracking, the Supersewer, the Congestion Charge and using public transport. Many though, like me, will probably have their lunches in upmarket cafes like Carluccio’s.
I would apply the money saved in the NHS, by using it to subsidise the cost of quality gluten-free bread, pasta and perhaps some cakes and biscuits. So for example a gluten-free loaf would then cost very much the same as a quality gluten-rich one.
That way all coeliacs would benefit.
It would also create jobs. Just think of the quality sandwich shop, where the owner makes his own sandwiches to order. So you want gluten-free bread? – No problem!
We don’t have a coeliac health problem over diet in this country. We have a health problem over diet. So let’s solve them all together with a proper integrated policy to get everybody eating well.
You won’t get everyone to eat better, but at least you’ll get some avoiding the problems of a bad diet.
Twenty Three Celias
I’ve now unpacked all the beer and they’re sitting on the kitchen worktop.
Twenty Three Celias
There was twenty four, but one got drunk.
My Celias Arrived Yesterday
At about ten on Wednesday morning, I ordered 24 bottles of Celia lager from DeliDevine.
Last night just as I was sitting down to my supper, there was a ring at the door and on looking out of the window there was a van from Fedex.
I opened the door and the jaunty driver put the 24 bottles inside.
I know you might get served a little quicker down the pub, but just over 24 hours to get a heavy parcel delivered, isn’t too bad in my view.
The Celia lager is very much worth drinking and I’m starting to add used bottles to my recycling box.
As it’s also available in some pubs, you can actually try before you buy, as I did a few days ago.
It’s also better than the Estrella Damm Daura, that I have to carry home from Waitrose.
The Warwick Hotel, New Barnet
Before I went to university, when I was still living at home, I used to go drinking in this pub, with an old school friend called Pete.
The Warwick Hotel, New Barnet
In those days in the 1960s, it was called the Warwick Hotel and although it is now closed its last name seems to have been The Bell And Buck.
I really don’t know why we went there. it might have been, because I looked under-age and they would accept any customer with money. But we’d usually have some beer and a couple of games of cribbage.
Little did I realise that my future wife was probably tucked up in bed, just round the corner.
A Beer Called Celia
I just had to try a gluten-free beer called Celia, as that was my late wife’s name. I found that they served it in a pub called The Regent in Liverpool Road, Islington. It just happened to be Liverpool Road, didn’t it? As of course we met in Liverpool in 1966!
A Beer Called Celia
It wasn’t a bad beer at all and I shall be drinking more of it.
But how long will it be, before we see a proper gluten-free real ale on draught in pubs. I suspect it’ll be there by the end of this decade.
Hollande Shows He’s A True Champagne Socialist!
There seems to be a big row brewing in France, as President Hollande has upped the tax on beer by a whopping 160%. He left the tax on wine and spirits alone. Read all about it, here in the Belfast Telegraph. This is the first paragraph.
France is planning heavy tax increases on beer, upsetting brewers – even in other countries.
President Francois Hollande is pushing through legislation to increase taxes on beer by 160% to help fund struggling social security programmes as France tries to lower a budget deficit hit hard by the economic crisis. The tax would affect local brews and the 30% of imported beer the French drink.
I suppose though, I’m not bothered, as I’ve never heard of a gluten-free French beer. Although, there’s some passable Belgian and Spanish ones.
Ipswich Launches Campaign Against Cheap Super Strength Alcohol
Ipswich is an independent town in the very independent county of Suffolk and it has always been thus for both of them. Today though it is reported, that they are launching a campaign to ban cheap super strength alcohol. It’s all here in the East Anglian Daily Times. I heard of it on Radio 5 and they said it was the first town in England to do so.
Let’s hope it all succeeds in its objectives.
I suppose the real problem is to get all of the small off-licences to comply.
Didn’t Anybody Tell GreaterAnglia?
I took this picture of Class 321 EMUs at Ipswich, as I left after the football.
Didn’t Anybody Tell GreaterAnglia?
Red doors have long been associated in East Anglia with bad beer and services. It’s the legacy of Grotneys! Who of course were infamous for Watneys Red Barrel. In my view the worst beer ever made. Although I did have one called Red Centre in Alice Springs out of a tin, that came close.
It’s the red word again.
The Highbury Corner littleWaitrose Just Gets Better
It’s now got goat’s milk and St. Peter’s beer and look at these two images of their free-from shelves.
It’s certainly a better selection than some of their bigger stores, with a very good selection from their range of gluten free products, like biscuits, cakes and bread.
The only products I can’t get are things that are heavy with a long shelf life, like beer and cleaning products, but I get those delivered from the Waitrose at the Angel, after buying them in-store. Incidentally, I haven’t used on-line shopping for groceries since I moved here.
A further point, is that later tonight, I checked the High Holborn littleWaitrose and the goods stocked and the layout of the Free From area, appeared to be the same or virtually so.
If this is a policy, I like it, as it means I can pick up a snack by just asking where the shelves are located. Assuming of course, that they haven’t run out.
So what would I change in a perfect world.
1. Waitrose usually has the EatNatural breakfast museli with buckwheat, whereas I prefer theone with vine fruit and have to buy it from Sainsburys.
2. The St. Helen’s Farm Goats Milk Yoghurt is not available in littleWaitroses.
3. There is no gluten-free beer in littleWaitroses. But I get those in once a month with the toilet cleanser.
In other words, I can live with that. But just as the goats milk has now turned up, I feel that if too many complain, adjustments to the stocking policy will happen.
Praise For Hackney, Wooden Spoon for Wandsworth
I know I missed the torch at the end of my road, but that was mainly because I took too long for a pit stop, but I did know where it was going to go, as the maps were good. But that is not what can be said for Wandsworth yesterday, where I tried to see the torch about 17:00. When I asked around, people seemed to be very anti-Olympics and it seemed mainly because of the Olympic Route Network, that made driving difficult. But then I always remember that driving is difficult south of the river.
Wandsworth or at least the centre is perhaps best summed up by the old Ram Brewery site. There’s even an old steam engine in there somewhere, that worked until the 1980s.
It used to produce one of the best real ales, but look at it now.
Chemical lager manufacturers have a lot to answer for. ADanish friend of mine once said that in Denmark, Carlsberg bought up every brewer and meant the only beer you could get is their product. He advised all in the UK, to not let it happen here.
It doesn’t matter to me now, as I can’t drink beer, but I know many feel that the destruction of the traditional British drinking culture has been one of the disasters of the last few decades. As a policeman once told me in all seriousness, you never get trouble in a real ale pub.
The Anonymous Widower 