As you can imagine, having staple foods such as bread, pasta and flour mixes on prescription is a vital lifeline for the majority of those who have to follow a gluten free diet, especially those where such carbohydrate rich food sources are important in their nutritional regime, such as diabetics.

Is wheat the only culprit or could it also be the way that much of our food is produced and reared? Or are we getting fatter because food is too readily available and cheap?

I was fortunate recently to have the opportunity to visit the US to see how the gluten-free food market differs from that in the UK.

I will do a lot of things to avoid dying of bowel cancer, and if one of those things is going to have to be sounding like a fussy eater in public, then so be it. Picky wins over dead. But the thing I hadn't quite realised is how wheat gets into everything. Like chips.

What is a fad diet? I only asked because a few commentators have suggested that gluten-free is the latest in a long line of fad diets - similar to the low carb Atkins Diet craze of a few years back, or the hunter-gatherer diet.