… when we received a letter on Saturday from our primary care trust coolly explaining that prescription food for coeliacs was being slashed, I despaired.Oh? Why?
Getting calories, calcium and iron into a child who is coeliac and lactose intolerant is a tall order, as many supermarket gluten-free products contain skimmed-milk powder to add flavour.So, buy the ones that don’t. Or cook.
Many gluten-free foods are dry and tasteless, but with our third and final prescription we found some palatable fresh bread, putting picnics back on the menu.Well, that’s nice for you, but I wonder with your busy schedule (“She is a former English and drama teacher and has also run her own clock-making business in Brighton, worked as a sub-editor on national newspapers and written theatre reviews for Teletext and local newspapers, as well as being involved in campaigning and fundraising for mental health charity Mind and homeless day centre Ace of Clubs”) you get the time for picnics.
And I wonder why you don’t think to devote some of that time to cooking home-made food for your daughter.
Just as we felt we were getting a handle on her diet, Surrey PCT sent us a callous, unsigned letter. "With immediate effect", it said, changes were being introduced to the prescribing of gluten-free foods across Surrey, Kent and Sussex.
Gone are the crackers, fresh bread and biscuits that Tilly's dietician urged us to get to increase her fat intake.I’m going to seem more than a little heartless here, but I’m actually in quite good company, for once.
Most of the commenters at this article seem to have found this one a little too hard to swallow themselves. Because what Clare really wants is for the taxpayer to stump up the money for it.
What next? Will the PCT ask diabetics to source their own insulin? Cancer patients to pay for their own treatments? Imagine the moral outrage.Diabetics require insulin or they'll die. Your child won't die if she doesn't eat gluten-free bread and crackers.
It's true, her diet will be further limited, but then I expect those with peanut allergies would love peanuts. Tough - they can't have them.
And I don't know if you've noticed, wrapped up in your own problems, but cancer sufferers have indeed had to fund their own treatments. In part because the NHS wastes vast sums of money on stuff like this!
And I don't know if you've noticed, wrapped up in your own problems, but cancer sufferers have indeed had to fund their own treatments. In part because the NHS wastes vast sums of money on stuff like this!
It takes some nerve to whinge about having to care for her own sick child and pay for the food herself. Most mothers I know go without food themselves to make sure theirs eat sufficiently.
ReplyDelete.
Makes you wonder why she bothered having a child. It seems to have interfered terribly in her own life.
As parent to a coeliac two-year old all I can say is 'suck it up, lady'. Yes, it took a long time for us find staple foods to cook for the finicky little moo, but we did find them and shockingly enough, it never occurred to us that the poor bloody taxpayer should have to fund it. I suffered with a lactose intolerance for a good few years myself, but I simply would never have dreamed of marching into the GPs and demanding he sign off a note so I could get my Arla milk on the state. Coeliac sufferers aren't ill like cancer patients are, they just have a particularly onerous and encompassing dietary problem which can be managed just the same as any other. An offensive and specious comparison, frankly.
ReplyDeleteDSD
Tim Worstall also comments on this one. Clearly this woman cannot differentiate between medicine and food. The taxpayer has no place funding her daughter's diet, but it is okay to provide for a diabetic's insulin. You don't see insulin on the shelves at Tescos. Most of us can see the difference.
ReplyDeleteJudging by the posters on the CIF thread every other person in Britain is allergic to something or other. I'm not paying for them all to shop at Waitrose.
ReplyDeleteLS
Tilly? FFS!
ReplyDeleteThose with allergies should have some food on the NHS while young. I am allergic to milk, curiously not lactose which separated from milk has no effect on me. Anywho, as a child I was offered and my parents got me something called Prosobe, I think that’s what it was called?!? It was a soya based white powder when added to water made a white liquid and was fortified with vitamins and minerals. Its taste was not dissimilar from my own puke after an allergic reaction but I got through a few tins of it. Now I cook using ingredients because milk is added to the strangest things in pre prepared food stuffs. Usually in an attempt to increase the protein content of fatty meat based products, you know like cheap sliced reformed sandwich meats. Crisps often have milk in them, so I can eat cheese crisps but not plain ones from one manufacturer, think that’s something to do with colouring. I suppose as a child it is far more important to get enough nutrients in yourself cus your growing but milk doesn't give you much you can't get from other foods. In fact we are not made to consume cows milk at all, it is just the cheapest option to get some things like calcium and protein. There are places in the world that do not rely on milk in traditional dishes for climatic and geological reasons other than tolerance to it and they do fine. Cows like flat pasture in a temperate climate and you don’t get much of that in a dessert or mountains, goats or camels?!?
ReplyDeleteAs an adult I think too much is made of milk, it is like buying/selling wet coal because it is heavier, a dairy free diet is not a bad one. If you know how to cook and what is in your food by reading the labels its not that hard to get more than enough nutrients relatively cheaply.
I know my mum was upset when I was a baby, but that was because I was allergic to her milk as I am all milk so she thought she was doing something wrong. I am told and believe that I can improve my tolerance to milk by exposure and my allergy is certainly not a severe as when I was a baby or when I am ill with something unrelated. That is an obvious consequence of allergies having something to do with your immune system.
This celiac thing is not my field of expertise but what do we gain from wheat? Carbs? So eat more rice and potatoes less bread, simples.
@ Longrider try telling that to the FDA. Beef cattle in the states is exposed to steroids that will effect an organism consuming its meat unless.... the steroids are denatured in the cooking process with heat. BTW using steroids on beef cattle is illegal in most other countries we recognise as civil.
ReplyDelete"Most mothers I know go without food themselves to make sure theirs eat sufficiently. "
ReplyDeleteThose would be the ones not indoctrinated to believe the state should support everyone.
"...shockingly enough, it never occurred to us that the poor bloody taxpayer should have to fund it."
Good for you. But do you ever wonder if it's you that's out of step with everyone else, not vice versa?
Because after a while, I'm now beginning to!
"You don't see insulin on the shelves at Tescos. Most of us can see the difference."
She seems to have had a good education, so can't blame stupidity for the offensiveness of her comparison. Just utter lack of empathy.
"Those with allergies should have some food on the NHS while young."
She does get the basics, as Tim Worstall's post points out. It's the treats that are no longer to be provided, the cakes and biscuits.
Yet you'd think the callous government had taken the food right out of her child's mouth, to hear her...
Judging by her profile she must be loaded, at least in comparison to most poor schmucks in this country who have to buy their own food.
ReplyDeleteRent seeking scrounging twat