Allergy Awareness Week: interview with Lindsey McManus of Allergy UK

It’s Allergy Awareness Week [20th to 26th April 2015], so an opportune time to talk about an issue that affects almost all of us at some point in our lives. Even if you don’t suffer with a food allergy or intolerance yourself, it’s highly likely that you have a friend or family member who does. But how many of us really understand what allergy is and how it impacts on the day-to-day lives of those around us?

Lindsey McManus is the deputy CEO of Allergy UK, the national charity which organises Allergy Awareness Week to highlight some of the difficulties faced by allergy sufferers in the UK. “Allergy is really a very big issue,” she says. “Around one in three adults and 50% of children will have some form of allergic disease in their lifetimes. Awareness is getting better, but there is a dearth of allergy clinics in the UK so for some people diagnosis takes a very long time.”

Towards the end of last year, a new EU regulation came into force governing how food manufacturers and the food service industry must supply information to customers about 14 top food allergens. It recently made headlines when a number of well-known chefs signed an open letter claiming the legislation would stifle their creativity. “This legislation had been on the horizon for two years, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise,” says Lindsey. “It’s early days for the catering industry and it will take a while for them to get used to it. But for someone with an allergy, it will be amazing. They will be able to go to a restaurant and ask, ‘Can you tell me exactly what’s in this?’ In some cases, no front-of-house staff know what goes into the food – just to have some form of manual with all the information in it will make a world of difference.”

For someone like Local Food Britain member Christina Wood of Good4U Gluten Free it means she doesn’t have to worry that eating out might make her severely ill. Christina was diagnosed with coeliac disease in March 2013 and now bakes a range of gluten-free breads, cakes, tarts and biscuits to cater for people like her, as well as working with allergy-aware restaurant finding website Can I Eat There?

She started her business because she was fed up with not being able to eat the things that she wanted when she went out. “Initially I didn’t want to eat out at all,” she says. “It was really, really tough – I’d been very ill before I was diagnosed so I had a fear of cross-contamination and restaurants that didn’t understand. I would tell them I couldn’t have bread but my salad would arrive with breadsticks or couscous in it. Eating out became less pleasurable and more of a chore. Now I can walk into a restaurant and say, ‘Have you got an allergy menu?’ – it’s very hard for all staff to know exactly what’s in each dish, so this makes it easier for everyone.”

Like Christina, many allergy sufferers have avoided eating out for fear of staff not understanding their needs or thinking they’re just being fussy. Lindsey is hoping that caterers will become more educated as a result of the new regulations, and perhaps tap into what could be a whole new market. “Restaurants should see this as an opportunity – there’s a whole section of the population that will now have the confidence to go out to eat,” she says.