Celiac playdates – My child invited a coeliac friend for tea, with Nicky Chilvers – Food For Kids Podcast

Joanne (00:00)

On today's Food for Kids, we find out what you need to know if your child invites home a friend for tea who is a coeliac and how to make sure that everybody has a happy, safe and yummy tea together.

Joanne (00:25)

Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. Today's part of our series called Help! My Child's Bringing Someone Home for Tea. These episodes are intended to give families who don't have a special diet themselves the basic information they need to be able to be inclusive for other people's children who do have a special diet.

This episode is about hosting children who need a gluten-free diet, either because they have coeliac disease or just because they react badly to gluten. I think this is one of the ones that frightens people a lot because like dairy, gluten is in a lot of foods that you wouldn't immediately think of.

So for this one, I asked Nicky Chilvers from Gluten Free Little Cook to come and help. NIcky a mum to two teenagers, one of whom has coeliac disease. It was a shock diagnosis for them in 2018 and she found there was very little support for parents to understand the disease and help their child adapt. The only way to help her child was to just research and learn about a gluten free diet and do it fast. Nicky has since written some books for both parents and children so that other families don't have to have the same struggles. I think it's a very helpful and reassuring interview with some very practical suggestions. So let's get to the interview.

Joanne Roach (01:40)

So Nicky, I know since your daughter was diagnosed a few years back, you've made it your mission to help other parents to find information because you found it so difficult to find the information yourself. But today I really wanted to look at the parents of children who don't have coeliac but who might have a friend who does, because I know we all get very scared when other people's children have got allergies, we all want to do the right thing. We also obviously want children with coeliac to be able to join in with everything and not have people scared off from inviting them to things.

For people who have a vague idea that coeliac disease is something to do with gluten, but they don't really understand the difference between that and just being a bit intolerant or sensitive, can you explain what it is and why it is really important to really avoid gluten in their diet?

Nicky Chilvers (02:22)

Many people think that avoiding gluten is cutting out bread, cakes and pasta and it's so much more. There's so much more involved. And what you need to do is remove everything that covers within gluten, which is barley, rye, oats, wheat and spelt (and whilst that falls under wheat, it's often something that people forget because they think it's an old grain, it'll be fine). So you need to cut all of those things out and have an incredible amount of cleanliness about everything and mind cross contamination. Gluten, it's in food, it's in drink, it's in chocolate and sweets. So it's everywhere. And it can even be in ice cream, which is what kids want to eat most of the time.

Joanne Roach (03:01)

And so if a child who has coeliac disease comes into contact with small trace amounts of gluten, how does it affect them How is it different for a child with coeliac?

Nicky Chilvers (03:10)

Well, every child is different. Everybody's reactions are different, which is why it's such a hard disease to diagnose. But one little crumb or somebody serving something with gluten on it can just make them incredibly poorly. I can only judge it on my child. Within six to eight hours, she gets a tummy ache. And then last time, because she hadn't been glutened for a very long time she had more adverse reactions and she actually had projectile vomiting So everybody reacts differently, they might suddenly be sick, they might suddenly be sleepy, they might have to go to the toilet, you just don't know. Everybody is so very different, which is what makes it such a hard disease to diagnose in the first place.

Joanne Roach (03:51)

So we definitely want to avoid that if we're inviting somebody over for tea! You've kind of hinted that there's a lot of hidden gluten in things you wouldn't expect. We would have thought of pizza, toast, cakes and biscuits and stuff. Maybe we'd have thought about the breading on, like, nuggets. What other weird things is there gluten in, that you wouldn't have expected there to be gluten in?

Nicky Chilvers (04:11)

Sometimes it's in sausages, a lot of the sausages now don't have it but because wheat is such a big filler you've got to read the labels to make sure that they're safe. You know Heinz baked beans, they're absolutely safe. And they used to have pork sausages in which were great as well and they were safe but they've changed the recipe, they're now using Richmond sausages which have wheat in them so they're now a no-go and they were really handy to have as a backup tea if your child was going somewhere, so just give her this tin of beans and sausages she'll be happy as Larry. It doesn't necessarily hide in the UK because it's not allowed to, there has to be it on the labeling. But it is in places where you just don't think. Yesterday evening I found gluten in black peppercorns.

Joanne Roach (04:50)

Yeah, I saw you had a reel about that. I couldn't believe that. I have seen it in things like obviously sauces and gravy mixes and things like that.

Nicky Chilvers (04:58)

Stock cubes. Stock cubes, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, some condiments. And it’s not always just that there’s gluten in it. If you’ve double dipped something, or had it in another dish beforehand or you put it into another jar, that’s cross contamination.

Joanne Roach (05:13)

So now that we're all scared of all the things that we've got to avoid! At the end of school, your child comes up and says, can my friend come home for tea. You know they're a coeliac. What, as the parent of a coeliac, would you want that mom or dad to do to make sure that that child was safe in their home when they come for tea?

Nicky Chilvers (05:15)

It can be done and it can be done really easily and that's the main thing. I would suggest give them all the same food and nobody knows when they've got something that's gluten-free now. It is really much better than it used to be years ago. So I would say get some gluten-free sausages, get some gluten-free fish fingers, some gluten-free chips, just make sure that they haven't got the wheat covering on them and a tin of baked beans. You know, what kids don't like that kind of dinner. It makes life much easier for you. So you've got all those items, they're all new, that's great. Cover your baking tray with foil if you've been cooking gluten items on it before. So that's safe and clear too. And then if you were cooking anything else in your oven that had gluten, you just put it in the oven at the top and cook everything and serve everything with clean utensils onto clean plates. Everybody's a winner.

Joanne Roach (06:16)

Okay, so better to go down the road of buying things that you know are going to be gluten free, that say so on the packaging and then start with completely clean cooking equipment and just isolate that rather than trying to have gluten ingredients for one child and gluten free for another and then try not to get them mixed together and…

Nicky Chilvers (06:34)

Absolutely. It just makes it easy. It takes the pressure off the mum who's hosting. It takes the pressure off the parent who's got the coeliac child making sure that everything is OK. If you've got, you know, all of the items are labeled gluten free. Tesco's finest sausages are gluten free and a lot of the Sainsbury's ones are as well. But you just want to make sure that everybody's got the same because then you're not worried about fingers going in. Everybody's washed their hands before tea so everybody's clean and then if the fingers happen to go in and pick up a sausage which they shouldn't, but you know… everybody's got clean fingers. Most people are pretty good washing the cutlery etc it's been through the dishwasher it's going to be fine. Clean plates, clean utensils, clean glass, make sure that they only have that one glass that they're drinking from. If you're having Coca-Cola just check the label on that because supermarket brand coca cola has often got barley in it.

Joanne Roach (07:23)

And when your daughter was a lot younger, primary age, would you have liked the parent to have given you a call and asked for any advice beforehand? Or was it much nicer for you if they just cracked on and did this stuff and reassured you that they were dealing with it?

Nicky Chilvers (07:37)

No, it needs to have a conversation first because you need to make sure that they understand all the little foibles that comes with cross-contamination and coeliac disease and it helps just make sure that your child is going to be safe. Then they're not going to be worried either. I had a great friend who had a birthday party and she made sure everything was gluten-free and she even made sure that she used the right chocolate because Cadbury's, you can't use a bar of Cadbury's, but you can use chocolate buttons. So she made the crispy cakes with those. You've got to have a conversation first and make sure they understand.

Joanne Roach (08:09)

So that scenario where they come out of school and they say, can so-and-so come home for tea? Call the parent, to say, I've gone and got these things, this is what I'm thinking of doing, does this seem right to you? And just run that by them. That would be, like, your best case scenario.

Nicky Chilvers (08:22)

Absolutely, yeah. You just want to make sure that everything ticks and you check the label, that they're comfortable and that your child is comfortable too.

Joanne Roach (08:30)

You've mentioned some really good ideas like the packaged gluten free convenience foods because they're all self-contained. Are there any other things that are quite easy to get right if that isn't a good option for your family?

Nicky Chilvers (08:41)

Yeah, gluten free pasta. You can use that too and sort of make a quick sauce with some tomato passata and add some cheese. Now what you need to mind there is that you are using gluten free pasta. You're using a clean saucepan that you've washed out. Obviously clean utensils to give it a stir. With gluten free pasta, you don't need to put oil in the water. You do just need to make sure it's added to boiling water and you give it a stir and then keep stirring on and off because otherwise it does have a tendency to clump.  Plenty of salt you know, the water should be as salty as the sea. Then drain it quickly and serve it quickly, cook it for two minutes under.

Joanne Roach (09:21)

Perfect, cool so that gives us some options then. We’ve got the fish fingers, sausages, beans, make sure the chips haven't got a coating on and then we've got a pasta and sauce meal. That should cover… what, 90% of kids that might come for tea?

Nicky Chilvers (09:31)

Or if need be a gluten-free pizza. As long as everything's got gluten free on the ingredients, it reads safe. Run it by the parent and you're good to go!

Joanne (09:43)

I think that approach of just serving everyone the same foods, getting packaged things where you can check the label and making sure everything is cooked together in clean pans with clean utensils is really easy to follow.

And definitely speak to the parent to see if you've got everything covered. Parents who are dealing with it all the time might be able to flag up something that you might otherwise have missed. So for example, the suggestion that Nicky made that food that goes in the oven should go above everything else. It would be so frustrating to carefully prepare your gluten-free food on a tray and then have something falling off a higher track and cross-contaminating it. So just following these basic ideas and making sure that you stay in communication with the parent is the best approach.

I hope this episode's been useful. I know that the friends that I have who have coeliac children find it really tiring and stressful when their children go somewhere new to eat. So I hope this will help you to help one of them. Parents of children with allergies have to work really hard to ensure that their children don't miss out on opportunities. So hopefully these episodes help a little bit to skill us all up to be a bit more confident including everyone.

Nivky gives out really practical information about living with coeliac disease on her Instagram feed as @gluten_free_little_cook and has her books for parents, children and teenagers and her membership for coeliac families on her website, which will be in the link in the show notes. She's well worth a follow if you want to understand coeliac disease better or please do pass her details on to any friends who might need her support.

Well, that's all for today. So I hope to see you on the next episode. And in the meantime, happy eating.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

01:40 What coeliac disease is and how gluten affects coeliacs

03:51 Unexpected places that gluten is found

05:13 What to do if your child invites a coeliac friend for tea

07:23 Why communication with parents of coeliac kids is crucial

08.30 Suggestions for coeliac friendly kids' dinners

09:43 Summary and outro