Should GF food be available on the NHS?

It's possible to have a healthy diet that doesn't contain bread, I would have thought.

Re NHS provision, it's down to cost. Are we prepared to pay more taxes to pay for hospitals to provide GF foods? They presumably already do for people who are diagnosed with coeliac disease and are in hospital for whatever reason.

Is rice gluten free? Only asking because GF has never been a concern for me so I've never bothered to check.

Well maybe but given all the pressure on drugs for life threatening and life limiting diseases, really I think these should be given priority. I have also discovered recently that I am glutin intolerant, but I, have whilst buying a very little amount of glutin free bread am simply not eating bread or stuff mneefing glutin free flour and am not really noticing any difference.

No!

I sympathise with you Kitty as I'm intolerant to cows milk and I buy coconut milk, which is more expensive and isn't as nice. In the past I've been intolerant to wheat and had to buy GF bread, which suited me for some reason. It is very expensive and tastes ghastly. I substituted Ryvita when I was skint, or did without, but I don't know how other people manage to cope on a low income.

Maybe the specialised products could be subsidised by the government, but where does it end?

Difficult choices are going to have to be made if the government is not able to provide the NHS with the necessary budget to cope not only with increasing need for health care but also to enable new and developing clinical interventions and technologies so that the general health of the nation can improve.

Many gluten free products are now on supermarket shelves and it is to be hoped that the quality, choice and price will improve also. There are a number of inventive chefs developing gluten free recipes and gluten free dietary regimes. In this case and for these reasons I would say no it shouldn't be free on the NHS with the proviso if people on low incomes are in genuine difficulty this could be addressed through the benefits system.

I do not think that cakes and biscuits, gluten free, should be supplied on prescription.

If one has to pay for prescriptions would it not be cheaper to buy "over the counter"?

I do not have a problem with gluten, but I think it is possible to eat too much, so I tend not to buy bread, but rice cakes and oatcakes, which are gluten free.
I remember when diabetics were given diabetic foods on the NHS. My husband would never eat them because they were horrible, full of sweeteners instead of sugar so we never asked for them on the NHS.
I do not know if they still are. Not sure if they were free or subsidised.

Coeliac disease is life threatening.

For what it is worth, I feel that if we want more to be available on the NHS we are going to have to be prepared to massively increase taxes/NI or do without other things.
But actually No, I am against extending the availability of GF foods on prescription.
I even think it is ridiculous that some "over the counter" drugs can be provided on prescription, e.g paracetamol which can cost under £1 a packet. What on earth are the admin costs of a doctor writing the prescription and the chemist processing it?
It is rarely the people paying the full £8 ish prescription charge who seek to have things on prescription and the good old general public is quick enough to jump up and down at today's prescription charges. Back in the days when DH had to pay for his (ridiculously lengthy, but life saving) long drugs list he bought a prepayment "season ticket " certificate which helped a lot, but we were under no illusions about the value of what he was getting.
Don't get me wrong, I have every sympathy for coeliac sufferers, 2DDs cannot eat wheat, but they look for their own alternatives !

It's a tricky question to answer honestly as anything to do with health is always emotive isn't it.

I personally don't think the NHS should pay /cannot afford to provide gluten free products. I believe we have to take responsibility for what we eat , know what you can or cannot digest to safeguard your well being. If there were no gluten free products available then it could be viewed differently.

It is like asking if an alcoholic should get free alcohol, should an obese person be provided free health food, should somebody with a lactose intollerence be given extra funding, the list goes on.

Why should the NHS provide funding across the board irrespective of financial ability to pay. Some people on a lower income choose to purchase less food but buy organic for example. What we provide for our well being is our responsibility. Some of us can't take dairy products, some sugars, some gluten.

It is all about food labelling, knowledge of the right and wrong foods you can eat, gluten free foods being just one issue that arises. Food labelling is essential. The NHS has a duty to discover when there is a problem, a duty to inform patients how to handle their illness but from that point the NHS cannot fund that lifestyle when it is available over the counter or requires preperation by the patient to maintain their health.

I have a friend who is gluten intollerent. She is hardly hard up and knows what she can or cannot eat. I believe I am right in saying one ice cream manufacturer she can use but not another, one gravy ingredient is suitable but another, she makes her own bread. etc. Why should the food be free and provided by the NHS.

I hope I have not caused offence, I understand the difficulty of a gluten free diet and it is only a personal view.

Nowadays there is such a variety of foods about that being told one is coeliac is not the problem it was years ago. Perhaps if sufferers are on a limited budget they could be offered help with buying staples such as bread and pasta as is done with powdered milk for babies.
As for prescriptions for cakes and biscuits when all ordinary dietary advice is to lay of such 'luxuries' seems totally at odds with good eating and healthy diets.

I had a part time job in Boots as a 16 year old and can remember the ridiculous list of things available on prescription...everything from cotton wool to lucozade....nowadays, if we want top notch cancer treatment and when soldiers have to go begging for decent prosthetic limbs we should accept that certain things are well within our own control. We should all be eating less bread, cakes etc and going down the more alternative grains and vegetable route anyway.

I seem to have somehow managed to miss that piece of news, despite being coeliac! Maybe because I was away last week?

Anyway - I manage very well, yes the substitute foods are expensive, but really as soon as you start to learn to think differently you soon find alternatives, and probably far healthier ones too. You automatically eat fewer carbs and start to cook more. The people who will suffer most will be the ones who eat the most bread, cakes and biscuits.

Let them eat apples!

It was on Breakfast this morning jane.

Aha - that explains it. I am not allowed to watch such frivolity currently!

Roll on DBH going back to work...

I seem to remember sometime ago reading that the rise in Gluten intolerance is caused by a new kind of harder wheat which keeps better and is pest resistant.

I Googled it but couldn't find any reference to this. Has anyone else heard about it?

Lona have you tried goats milk?

I have thought about this since hearing about it on the news; one DD is coeliac and has recovered quite well since being on a gluten free diet. However, she lives in Australia and there is no such thing there as obtaining gf foods on prescription! In fact, she was astonished to hear that this is routine in the UK.
She eats a very healthy diet.

We have another distant relative in the UK who also has coeliac disorder (I will call it disorder not disease!) and he doesn't ask for anything on prescription because he said there is no point - each item is prescribed separately with a separate prescription charge so it's cheaper to buy what he wants; it is so widely available these days anyway.

I don't understand why it is necessary to prescribe doughnuts, pasties, cakes, biscuits etc on the NHS. The NHS is therefore providing high-sugar food to people on prescription, which surely goes against what they are telling us is the latest 'bad' food!

Perhaps if someone is on a low income they could be prescribed gf flour or bread, but, quite honestly it is possible to survive very well without it.

Falconbird yes, I have heard that newer varieties of wheat are higher in gluten and wheat is a 'filler' in lots of other foods where you would not imagine it could be.

There was a limit to what we could prescribe and things like biscuits were ruled out ages ago; most people just had bread I think; @ 8 loaves a month [mind you, I am going from memory here]. It was expensive, though.

My DGS has wheat/ gluten free bread paid for by NHS.Perhaps this is for children only though. it costs a couple of pounds per loaf in the supermarket ( a very small loaf.)He is only allowd two per week.

Yes, the bread is expensive, and it's just not as nice as wheat bread.

DD has been experimenting with banana flour, I don't know if it is available in the UK but she said it is very good (and doesn't taste of bananas, so can be used for pizza bases etc).

There is fresh bread available on prescription which has to be frozen straight away, but I believe it's nicer than the long lasting stuff.

rosequartz -

thanks I thought I had read about the newer varieties of wheat being higher in gluten - surely here is the answer - go back to the old wheat and people won't have so much trouble digesting high gluten wheat. It would save so much pain and money for all concerned or am I being over simplistic?

When I was diagnosed with coeliacs twenty years ago it was virtually impossible to get gluten free products e.g. pasta, bread, crackers other than on prescription. Luxury foods such as cakes and biscuits have never been available on prescription. I no longer bother to get things on prescription and rarely eat GF bread or cakes as they are so expensive. It is possible to get by without. Instead I might eat crisps or rice cakes.

phoenix yes, its too similar to cows, and having tried all the others ( soya, rice, hemp, almond) I find that coconut milk tastes most like cows milk.