"Gluten-free options"

Dear Baily, I am very sorry that the gluten free meals provided were not of a satisfactory standard. The new food trolleys are great and it's a shame that your daughter was unable to access food of the same standard. I have received a response from Ruarairdh MacKinnon the Patient Catering Manager for NHS Grampian in order to be more specific in my response to your feedback.

Ruaraidh states:

Food Safety legislation changed around the 14 key allergens at the end of 2014. Since then patients who have been diagnosed as coeliac have been provided with bought-in Gluten free meals from a company that can guarantee 100% Gluten free products.

We can provide a range of items ourselves for patients which are produced with non-gluten containing ingredients, however we cannot guarantee 100% compliance with gluten free requirements in the legislation by producing the products ourselves as gluten may be in the atmosphere of our production kitchen and the requirements define gluten free as being no more than 20 parts per million which would need an atmosphere to be completely free of allergens.

We are sorry that your Daughter did not have a good experience of her meals whilst staying with us and we will feed this back to our supplier. If your Daughter is admitted in the future please ask nursing staff to contact the Catering Team and or Dietetics Department so that we can assist to find a better solution. If you wish to discuss this further with us then please feel free to contact Ruaraidh on ruaraidh.mackinnon@nhs.net