The summer before my husband, Dan, was diagnosed with coeliac disease we hired two Tuscan villas overlooking a pool with three other families. For the next week, the whole gang (eight adults, eight children) ate pizza in nearby Florence, ordered bowls of pasta at the local trattoria and bought bundles of fresh bread to eat poolside with cheese and bottles of wine. 

A month later we took our two daughters, then aged one and four, to Disney World in Florida and enjoyed American-style burgers and sticky ribs. The summer was rounded off with a week in Whitstable with friends where we enjoyed mussels with crusty bread and ate fish and chips on the beach. Like most people, our holidays were wonderfully synonymous with gastronomic indulgence, if mysterious and excruciating pain for Dan.