Call for More Dairy-Free Restaurant Food

Lawrence Kay, the founder of food development consultancy Foodworks in the U.K., warned that:

the number of people living with a food allergy or intolerance will reach 12m by 2010, and chefs will need to adapt their menus accordingly if they don’t want to exclude such a big share of their market.

Quoted in an article by Becky Paskin on BigHospitality.co.uk, Kay had some simple recommendations for restaurants and pubs.

"We should be thinking of offering bread and lactose alternatives, and while I doubt that we will ever be able to guarantee that we can cater for coeliac sufferers we can provide for those simply wishing to reduce their intake," Kay commented. "We put butter and milk in mash potato to make it creamy – put olive oil in and there’s hardly any people who have an intolerance to it."

The dairy-free market in the UK has seen massive growth over the past few years, and is now worth £23m. Sales of gluten free food rose to over £47m.