THE GLUTEN-FREE MEDITERRANEAN DIET

It took a visit to the IVF clinic for Helen Tzouganatos to discover she had coeliac disease – a condition where your immune system attacks your own tissues when you eat gluten. For someone brought up in the Mediterranean tradition of eating, where meals tend to be shared, celebratory occasions featuring a lot of baked goods, this news came as a shock.

“I had all the common complaints of fatigue, lethargy, anemia, stomach cramping, all those everyday complaints that quite often go unnoticed,” Helen says. “When I went to my IVF doctor, and he asked me if I had any health problems, I said, No, no, I just get tired quite easily because I’m always anemic. He said to me,You may be a coeliac.”

Helen had never heard of the term, but a blood test and biopsy soon confirmed the diagnosis.

“There’s a happy ending to that story, which is I had two kids through IVF, and the third one I conceived naturally, five years after going gluten free. It can take about that long for your body to heal from the damage.”

That level of system-wide inflammation is not unusual for coeliacs, despite common belief that the condition is limited to digestive symptoms. Coeliac disease is an autoimmune condition, which may explain why it seems to be roughly five times more common for people who have type 1 diabetes.

When Helen was diagnosed 15 years ago, finding gluten free products was a struggle. Shop-bought bread substitutes tended to be inedible. Not wanting to miss out on the communal meals that are such a big part of the Mediterranean lifestyle, she turned to making her own.

“I wanted to eat all those classic Mediterranean dishes that I grew up with, so I started experimenting with recipes and flours that I would have to buy from a health food store 20 kilometres away,” Helen says. “Now you can find buckwheat flour, tapioca flour, rice flour on your supermarket shelves.”

Helen’s new book, Gluten Free Mediterranean contains an extensive collection of her coeliac-friendly spins on these classic recipes. Even if you’re not coeliac, Helen’s easy-tofollow approach makes the cookbook a good place to start if you’re wanting to give the Mediterranean diet a go – it has been shown to have wide health benefits, including improvement in diabetes management.

While some might be wary of substitutes, Helen says her version of the recipes are good enough to fool the most breadobsessed of diners.

“We’ve come a long way in terms of packaged goods, but they’re still not great. If you’re making something from scratch, like my baked cakes, and breads and pies, you would not know they are gluten free. Your friends and family won’t even know.”

The focus throughout the book is on making meals as inclusive as possible, rather than banishing anyone whose intolerances or lifestyle choices might make it hard for them to share the table.

“In the Mediterranean, we show our love by cooking for people and sharing a family meal together and enjoying a glass of red wine,” Helen says.

“What I’m doing is making it so nobody is excluded at the table. Everyone can have a slice of Easter bread, nobody’s left out. Who doesn’t have a member of their family or their circle of friends with a food allergy?”

To that end, her book offers suggestions to further tweak the recipes to make them work for people who avoid meat or dairy.

“A lot of people who don’t eat gluten also don’t tolerate dairy very well. I do eat dairy, but only in small amounts. The recipes are probably 70 to 80% dairy-free and, where I have used dairy, you can just leave it out or use dairy-free substitutes.”

And if she had to pick one recipe to convince the gluten-free sceptics?

“One that people have given me great feedback on is a moussaka that you can eat if you’re gluten-free or dairy-free. Instead of making a bechamel sauce, which is cheesy and creamy, replace it with a whipped pumpkin and cauliflower mash on top. When you bake it, it’s so beautiful and rich and comforting, you don’t even miss the meat or the dairy at all!”

Gluten-free Mediterranean: Your favourite Mediterranean dishes reimagined, from pillowy breads and hearty mains to syrupy sweets by Helen Tzouganatos is out now from Pan Macmillan Australia.

For more information on living with coeliac disease and diabetes: www.ndss.com.au/about-diabetes/resources/ find-a-resource/coeliac-disease-fact-sheet/

Diabetes WA dietitians suggest using 500g of mince and adding in a tin of brown lentils to reduce the fat content. This will increase the amount of carbohydrates in the meal slightly, which you may need to consider.

For more great recipes and articles check out the latest issue of Diabetic Living.