Many of you would have attempted a wheat exclusion diet along the road to good health, and no doubt discovered this grain is insidious!

It is often found lurking in fairly benign stock cubes and even soy milk (think malt), and at times can even be discovered sneakily lolling around in rye sourdoughs and children's sweets! Outrageous indeed. So what follows is a comprehensive, but by no means exhaustive list, of possible wheat sources. No excuses now for any slip ups in that wheat exclusion diet!

Flour, bread, pasta, cereals, noodles, biscuits, cakes, breadcrumbs, spelt, kamut, couscous, burghul, semolina, tritacale, wheatgerm, wheat bran, soy sauce, thickener added to soups and salad dressings, malt, soups with noodles or spaghetti, imitation meat products (such as gluten dishes found in some Asian cuisines), hot dogs, imitation crab meat, ice- cream (check labels), ice-cream cones, cottage cheese with modified starch, licorice, beverages such as beer, ale, malted milks, cereal coffee substitutes, Worcestershire sauce, MSG, modified food starch, vegetable starch, natural flavourings.

The lesson is as obvious. Read all labels; the less processed the food the better, less opportunity for unwanted and unnecessary wheat additives.

It is interesting to ponder that of the 8,000 species in the grass family, only a small number play a significant role in the human diet. Other than sugar cane, these are the cereals – wheat, barley, rye and oats.