Emily L BPS

Over Saturday the 20th and Sunday the 21st of October was the Gluten Free Wheat Free Show which was held in Melbourne, Australia. It was the second show. My family and I had a stand selling my mum’s books. It was a great. At the show, there was a lot of food samples of yummy lollies and chocolate, breakfast cereals and other foods like that. It was a good way to find out about different companies that make different foods that are gluten free. It was surprising how many different companies there are that make gluten free food and how many we didn’t know about. My family and I had heaps of fun over the two days and we all enjoyed ourselves a lot. Here is a pic:

On Sunday, the 18th of November, the Coeliac Kids Christmas Party was held in Melbourne. It is run by the Coeliac Society of Victoria and it is a really good function for all kids and their immediate family who are members of the Coeliac Society. There are organised games for the children and their are lots of other fun things to do such as the jumping castle, the swings, the playground and a basketball ring. It is a barbecue lunch and everyone is asked to bring a plate of food to share.

There is also a raffle and if you win, you can win things like hampers of gluten free food. It is a really fun day. At the end, when it is time to go home, the coeliac children get a bag of gluten free food that has been donated to the Coeliac Society. It is great to open that bag and find lots of gluten free foods that we didn’t know about before. It is a brilliant day and I am always really keen to go there. One of my favourite parts of the day would probably be the raffle because it always gets your nerves going.     

Nadine asked me: Is coeliac disease permanent for life? My answer is; yes, coeliac disease is with a coeliac for their whole, entire life. It doesn’t matter whether a coeliac is on a gluten free diet for one or even ten years, a coeliac always has coeliac disease. I hope this helps answer your question, Nadine.

Nadine asked me: what does a coeliac look like? Well, as I have explained in some of my other posts, coeliacs are the same as everyone else - they just have to eat gluten free food. This means that they look the same, smell the same ( ) , and do everything normally, just like everyone else. The only thing different about coeliacs is that if they eat something that has gluten in it, they may have some symptoms including the ones that are in my post “ The Symptoms of Coeliac Disease .” I hope all of this answers your question, Nadine!

Nadine asked me: What is gluten free? Here is my answer:  The foods that coeliacs’ are allergic to are wheat, rye, barley and oats. These foods can be replaced by corn, rice, nuts, fruit and vegetables. These foods are a blend of very good, nutrition. As you can probably see, a coeliac’s diet is pretty healthy! I hope that all of this answers your question, Nadine!   

If there is anything that you don’t understand about coeliac disease, please write a comment on this post. I will happily answer your comments in one of my posts that I will write later on. I will also make a link back to your blog on the post (if you have a blog).  

 Coeliacs have their very own motto - ‘if in doubt, leave it out’ - which means, if you’re not sure about something, don’t eat it. For example, if you were at a friends’ house and she offered you a lolly pop but it didn’t have the ingredients on it, going by our motto you wouldn’t eat it because you weren’t 100% sure that it was gluten free. Or say if you were given a bag of chips and it said ‘may contain traces of wheat’. You wouldn’t eat it in case there was even a crumb of gluten on the smallest chip, because eating one chip that has gluten in it makes just as much trouble as eating a room full of chips with gluten in them because the damage is done no matter how much gluten you eat (although the bigger the amount, the longer your stomach and other parts of your body will hurt.) So remember, if in doubt, leave it out!  

 Jordan asked me ‘what do dietitians do?’ Well, here’s my answer: Dietitians basically help people to keep healthily by keeping fit and active plus eating a healthy diet. This means that they help people plan out healthy meals for themselves and their family, they help people to control their weight plus other things necessary such as not putting so much sugar into their diet and exercising regularly. A dietitian who specializes in coeliac disease is a different story all together. A dietitian who specializes in coeliac disease helps people have a better understanding of the gluten free diet (wheat, rye, barley and oat free).

They also help their clients with what products are gluten free and what foods/drinks are not. One of the most important things that they do is help people to read and understand the labeling on a can or packet. This is a really important task as it is so easy to think that you’ve found something gluten free to eat but actually, you don’t know one of the terms for gluten and you eat it and then you’re sick. Dietitians that specialize in coeliac disease usually have a great understanding about coeliac disease and they can nearly always answer any of your questions that are troubling you. I hope that this post answers your question, Jordan!              

 In one of her comments, Katya asked me, ‘do you mind having to eat certain foods?’ Here is my answer: No, I don’t mind eating certain and different foods to others because it makes me individual and unique that I am different to others in this sort of way.I feel happy and proud the way I am and I don’t mid it when people think that I’m a bit different to others because I know that I am just the same as everyone else - all I have to do that makes me a bit different is eat gluten free food!

 Nadine asked me in one of her comments, how I came about choosing that I wanted to be dietitian specialising in coeliac disease. Well, here’s the answer:

After all of the difficulties of finding out that my dad, brother and I were all coeliacs, I thought that there wasn’t enough help around. So I made up my mind that I wanted to help people with the diet and help people with the difficulties they were having with either being a coeliac or having one around. I think that one of the purposes of life is to help people and that is what I want to do later on in my life. Being a dietitian will definitely help people who need it and I hope that they will benefit from the help that I give them due to background knowledge that I have .

Well, that is basically how I came about choosing that I want to be a dietitian specialising in coeliac disease and why. I hope that this answers your question, Nadine !