WHEN doctors advised Nicky Gray to take wheat out of her ailing daughter's diet, little Kyla at first reacted well.
"On the seventh morning she was a completely different child," her mother recalled.
"The swellings went down and we thought we had solved the problem."
It looked like the gluten allergy known to people with Coeliac disease. But it wasn't as simple as that.
"Gradually Kyla started showing intolerances to other foods – dairy foods, eggs, tomatoes, fructose."
Kyla was vulnerable to body rashes, skin sores, tiredness, headaches and stomach cramps.
And if feeding her daughter was not enough of a challenge, Nicky's son Kaan started showing similar symptoms.
"With him it's just wheat and gluten – and not all tomatoes but cherry tomatoes," said Nicky, 34, a single mother from Wollaton.
"Until they became ill I didn't know anything about allergies but I found out that multiple allergies are actually very common, especially if you suffer things like asthma and hayfever."
The first priority was to get things right in the kitchen.
"Bread, pasta and cereals are a problem but they're OK with rice, potatoes, vegetables, meat and fish," said Nicky.
"For pizzas I'll get a gluten-free base and spread it not with tomato but a roasted red pepper sauce and top it with dairy-free cheese.
"Then I began to educate myself on food allergies and I also learned how it could affect young children at school. Because my daughter would become bloated, children at school would call her fat.
"She couldn't have birthday treats that other children enjoyed so I would give her 'Free From' treats, which other children also found odd."
Determined to do the best for her children – and eager to promote understanding in youngsters who are more fortunate – Nicky changed career.
Her experience of working in a city council team dedicated to improving life for disabled children would have stood her in good stead as she took her ideas into a Dragons' Den-style competition at the University of Nottingham.
"It was a competition for creating a business plan," recalled Debbie, who has no allergies of her own.
"I pitched my idea and won the competition and £5,000 worth of funding."
The prize enabled Nicky to study and gain qualifications in the field of allergies and intolerance and to set up Food Freedom – a training agency and consultancy.
She is an Ambassador for Allergy UK and her fund-raising activities will include a first half-marathon later this month for the Allergy Nurse Appeal.
She has already made her mark with awareness pilot workshops at schools like Netherfield Primary.
"It's mainly for children who do not have allergies because I want them to understands that friends who do have allergies are actually no different from them.
"The information could be useful later in life, especially if they decide on careers in catering."
On which subject, Nicky and Food Freedom are now at the forefront of the drive to get local restaurants complying with EU's Food Information for Consumers Regulations which come into force on December 13.
It will take rules on allergy information several stages beyond the "may contain nuts" warning to be found on restaurant menus.
As Nicky explained to 20 local chefs at her seminar yesterday at Riverbank Bar and Kitchen, Trent Bridge, the onus is on restaurateurs to provide the dining public with much more information on the 14 prime allergens to be found in kitchens (see panel below) – and to ensure staff are trained to be compliant with the regulations.
For instance, customers have the right to know that chicken korma contains milk and almonds; that carrot cake contains milk, egg, wheat and walnuts.
This information will have to be displayed on menus, or on chalkboards, or with references to an easily accessible handbook of recipe ingredients, or it will have to be communicated to diners by waiters. The spoken information, however, will have to be consistent and accurate – and may be tested and noted if the diner happens to be an undercover trading standards officer. The regulations also include exacting requirements for the labelling of ingredients within kitchens.
Delegates at the seminar included prominent local chefs including Peter Kirk of the Dog and Duck, Clipstone, and Riverbank's own Mark Osborne. Both said the event was a useful lead-in to the new information regime.
"It went really well," said Nicky afterwards, while preparing tea for her two children, now aged seven and four and pupils at Firbeck Academy.
"A couple of the chefs said they might want to contact me again for guidance and this is on top of contracts I've got with three colleges for training hospitality students. I think the company is taking off."
And the view from the kitchen table? Said Kyla: "I think mummy should be proud of herself and the work she is doing."
For more information about Nicky's business, visit www.food-freedom.co.uk
