A few weeks ago the BBC brought the wrath of the Coeliac community down on its head by again disrespecting them in its evergreen Saturday Kitchen spot. Not only did they joke about guest musician Sharleen Spiteri’s coeliac disease but later in the programme they appeared to serve her gluten filled toast.
No one is wishing to be po-faced about this but it is notoriously hard to get the health messages about coeliac disease across, and having an ‘oh – having just a little bit won’t hurt’ message broadcast across the airwaves is not helpful.
For an excellent post on the event, the issue and the BBC’s seriously disappointing response to his complaint and that of many others, see Alex Gazzola’s post, Saturday Chickens on his Allergy Insight blog.
Natasha’s Law – and how far we have come
please, please can you to persuade the BBC to do a programme on cooking for those of us who are allergic/food intolerant. Does it ever occur to the chefs that we cannot eat their food. I have tonight watched Jamie Oliver but would not be able to eat any of it. These programmes are wasted because half the population eat take aways/ ready meals and cannot cook anyway. We. had a very successful weekend catering for a coeliac child, but then we know what we are doing. They recently found Waitrose had changed the ingrediants of their organic minced meat balls and did not recheck the label, their daughter was violantly ill. Please Waitrose do not do this. Please keep up your good work. Jacquie Broadway
You are so right, Jacquie – but then, as the BBC made quite clear in their letter ot Alex, they view these programmes as ‘entertainment’, not educational programmes. Which would be fine if someone somewhere else (like in schools) was actually educating children. Thank God for charities such as Adopt a School which do bring good cooking to our children.