Accidently posted this on healthy eating at first, in case anyone thinks they're going mad 😬
I just learned that Saturday Kitchen (BBC) had a coeliac on their show on the 18th of September, in a show I think people might like to submit a complaint against.
The chef was cooking up cheese on toast, she mentioned she had coeliac disease, he said "we don't want to talk about that", then he proceeded to dish up her cheese on toast, where she was told to just "eat some cheese".
You can see a snippet of the show in this article:
I think this is shocking and shows contempt for Shareen's needs and an embarrassment to Saturday Kitchen sadly, so thanks for raising awareness of this.
I agree. Really not good enough. So dismissive and we have such a hard time already trying to impress on people the seriousness of cross contamination or inadvertently eating gluten as in eating the cheese from the top of the toast!!
I am really surprised that an experienced chef, Matt Tebbutt is not aware of the issue of cross contamination. I had heard about this incident but it is the first time I have seen the clip. I have just accessed his (MT) Twitter, and oddly, there is nothing after 18th September, suggesting it might have got a bit shouty and has been paused. I am also surprised that Sharlene S did not object. Was she so enthralled, or maybe under instruction not to 'rock the boat'. Very poor indeed. Update, I have emailed BBC POV.
I did notice that CoeliacUK had spoken out on this and advised anyone with coeliac disease eating bread, even occasionally was not recommended. I’ve stopped being surprised at celebrity chefs, but it gives coeliacs a bad name if people will coeliac disease say they eat bread occasionally, as it suggests that it’s a ‘choice’ of lifestyle, rather than the serious disease, that it is!
I also seldom watch cookery programmes, because as well as having coeliac disease, I’m also dairy and soya intolerant, as well as being allergic to certain foods. I also have to stick to low FODMAPS as I have problems with a lot of vegetables and fruit too.
On the face of it it’s appalling. However, point one did she warn them in advance of her being coeliac? No doubt he has to prepare beforehand for his show and may have been taken completely off guard, hence his rather offhand reply. Point two, her comment about eating bread occasionally will let non coeliacs think it’s no big deal then - wrong! Finally, point three would he have told a vegan ‘just eat the toast’?
Yeah, I think it's not helpful that she says she occasionally eats bread, but I think as a chef he should have still catered for her being a coeliac, it's her choice whether to make herself sick, not his.
If nothing else, their guests deserve to be fed a proper meal, rather than just having to pick at a small piece of it. I can't be the only one frustrated at restaurants just taking the gluten thing off your plate and expecting you to be happy with half a meal 🤔
I have coeliac disease, it’s an autoimmune disease that damages your intestines, causes intestinal cancer, osteoporosis and degrades the immune system. The only treatment is to avoid gluten containing ingredients such as wheat, barley and rye. Thankfully most chefs understand allergies and the importance of reducing health risks to their customers. I enjoy eating out and in general I've managed to do this safely with only a small number of exceptions where I've been poisoned by gluten.
Whilst watching Saturday Kitchen I was aghast to see Matt Tebbutt and Niklas Ekstedt pass a cheese on toast dish to Sharleen Spiteri. Sharleen Spiteri had already mentioned she had coeliac disease and surely programme researches must ask the appropriate allergy questions of the programme’s guests? Sharleen was placed in an appalling position when offered what was to her a poisonous dish. It’s hardly the appropriate programme for someone with an autoimmune disease or allergy to specific foods to grandstand their health issue and I suspect she felt she had no choice but try to eat some of the cheese topping without touching the toast. This isn’t a solution, you only need a pin head of wheat flour to severely damage a coeliac disease sufferer’s small intestine. Every time this happens it puts the individual at risk of developing cancer and, apart for what often results in ‘living out of the loo’ for days-weeks, during the weeks-months it takes for intestines to heal you aren’t absorbing nutrients properly which impairs your immune system; not what you want in the
middle of a pandemic is it!
You’ve added fuel on the fire of the presumption that people avoid gluten for fashion reasons, which some do. You need to work out how you are going to fix what you’ve done as doing nothing would be an appalling way forward. I could never take Matt Tebbutt or Niklas Ekstedt seriously again as chefs for this as their first professional rule must be that they do no harm. I hope Sharleen was lucky!
Sadly I got the standard reply from the BBC which other's including C UK have. So I responded with the following which I doubt will get a better reply really but hopefully the weight of complaints might make them pay more attention to the problem they've caused...
I'm sorry but your reply doesn't address my concerns.
BBC programme researchers should be carrying out due diligence for allergies with guests - do they? Gluten for a coeliac disease doesn’t result in an anaphylaxis shock but it will always cause serious damage to the intestines and leave that person at more risk of infections. If Sharleen wasn’t harmed on the show it can only have been by her good fortune. I’m disappointed that she didn’t show more responsibility herself and it was an opportunity missed to not spend a minute or two explaining why she shouldn’t have shared a dish with conventional bread.
Your mission is to act in the public interest. Your principles are to inform and educate as well as entertain. You entertained on Saturday Kitchen but the Programme sewed misinformation about the seriousness that chefs and anyone cooking should show about allergies in general and coeliac specifically. It is this aspect that I expect the BBC to now fix properly because it is important to the health of 1 percent of the population who have coeliac disease or gluten allergy as well as others suffering different allergies who have a right to believe that your programmes will act in their interest.
Thank-you for posting your follow up. It really was a very wash-hands response, not great at all.
I found the chef saying they had given her bread, because she hadn't listed bread on her "can't eat" list, but he seems to have forgotten that gluten free bread is a thing.
Yes, Matt Tebbutt just showed himself as either not understanding allergies or not caring about them and either isn't great for a chef. SK could have gone the Celebrity Masterchef 2021 route where contestant and coeliac Megan McKenna explained it a bit and made GF pasta, pastry etc. So BBC can get it right, its just the SK team that are a bit thick.
I've seen comments about this on Twitter. A journalist guy posted his comment he got back from the BBC after complaining and no one was taking responsibility or even trying to remedy the situation in anyway.
I am still getting monthly emails from Coeliac UK, in spite of stopping my subscription. Today's email gives a link to their letter to the BBC - it is the most helpful thing C UK have done (other than the basic info they provide for new coeliacs which is helpful)
What CUK should be doing is launching action against the BBC for non-response. This is where CUK fall down. They are a chocolate teapot in many ways as letter writing does little to change anything - the next port of call would be to state clearly that some action of some sort will be taken by CUK should the BBC fail to respond with some clear action they will take to remedy the situation and ensure no repeat (this has happened before on Saturday Kitchen). We unfortunately have a coeliac charity that lacks teeth, and they lack teeth for a reason - they really don't want to up their campaigns of activism (currently zero activism, just some vaguely fluffly social media posting) as it will mean getting their hands dirty, annoying people who put money in their pocket (food manufacturers, restuarants, etc.), and admit that their ongoing lack of activism may be part of the issue.
The BBC have responded to CUK, and CUK have posted the response they received on Facebook (it's the stock response everyone else received). They've said they will be in touch to follow up on the matter (sorry I can't link to the post directly, but it's about 3 posts down)
There is a formal complaints process to follow with the BBC, so I think we have to have some patience to allow that formal process to play out, before we say CUK have taken no action.
The issue with 'formal' complaints processes is they tend to consume a lot of time (and that can be quite purposeful for reasons of negating legal time limitations), but also to give the appearance that the matter is being taken seriously. They tend to only lead to one standard response - 'we are sorry you felt the need to complain, but we did nothing wrong, but we acknowledge that you are somehow upset because you seem to be the problem, not us, and if you want to appeal this outcome decision, please refer on to our equally disinterested and entirely biased oversight body'. I firmly believe CUK will quietly back away from this, and most will forget it has happened and not go looking for any outcomes until it happens again.
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