Summer Fun or Holiday Hell?

Summer's officially here and a wave of holiday excitement hits you or perhaps anxious anticipation of your nightmare break with the nut-allergic member of the family. Finding a suitable destination with facilities to cater for special dietary needs can prove difficult. Language barriers and changing environments only aggravate the situation.

We have just returned from France (Probably one of the nuttiest countries in Europe - no pun intended) and how did we survive? Well, we did self-cater most of the time, but encountered problems when attempting to eat out, particularly as there appear to be several different words for nut in French - arachide, cacahuette and noix being just the tip of the iceberg.

We also visited Disneyland, Paris, a place where you'd hope they had experience of our problems. Despite e-mailing twice in advance we still had to explain our situation to Reception, then the breakfast staff before it finally sunk in. When they eventually understood a member of staff knocked on our cabin door to deliver a kiwi, an apple, a milkshake and a packet of biscuits - Voila! - the allergic breakfast! The biscuits certainly tasted dairy and gluten free, but usually that doesn't follow that they are nut-free and without any packaging we decided not to risk it.

Within Disneyland Park, none of the restaurants indicated whether they could cater for our needs and with 3 out of 5 ice-creams being sold in the park containing nut ingredients, we considered they probably weren't very 'no-nuts' friendly.

The biggest difficulty was getting people to comprehend the cross-contamination risk. It was easy to convey that we couldn't eat nuts, but also food that might have been in contact with nuts was hard for the French to comprehend. It was frustrating, but on reflection it's exactly the same problem in the UK. (See Happy to Help for another rant)

Following our return I discovered two e-mails from a couple of companies offering their dietary cards which (allegedly) do the job of explaining allergies for you. I like the idea, particularly as they lend credibility to your plight. (I've got it in writing, so it must be true…) I've duly requested one in French to find out what we should have said and to see if they help get our message across in the UK. Road Test to follow.

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