FEELING GOOD IS THE NEW NORMAL

Our main feature on page 6 has food blogger and commercials director

Jono Hall sharing his recipes for a gluten-free lifestyle

What made you go down the

gluten-free path? I used to give up bread once a year for a month or two at a time as both a quick-fix way to lose weight and because it was a way to feel like I was doing a David Blaine-esque feat of endurance. Last year however, the change I felt going wheat-free, then fully gluten-free, was so profound and generally uplifting that one month turned into two, then three, and now it’s just something I do.

Has it made a difference? The short answer is of course, yes. But there is also a slightly longer one that goes as follows: there’s hardly anything negative one can say in the face of losing about 9kg and not having a continuous rumbling Icelandic volcano for a digestive system. Do you bake a good gluten-free loaf? The secret? I’m not the greatest baker, but the sweet-potato flatbread (recipe overleaf) is ridiculously easy and I’ve used it as a substitute for pizza bases lately to great effect.

What foods do you miss? I will not lie, I have been hankering for a croissant lately. Sigh.

Are rice cakes your life-saver? I actually really like rice cakes. A rice cake piled up with hummus, pickles and a bit of rocket is really quite wonderful. What is your most clever gluten

free food tip or trick? There are incredible misconceptions about what foods have gluten in them, which is not actually as extensive as most people imagine. Rice, corn, lentils, chickpeas and of course potatoes are all gluten-free — and one kind of flour or another is made from all of these.

What is your snack of choice? Biltong, which is probably not a great one for everyone, but nuts

and dried fruit have also become constant companions. Has gluten intolerance become

a fad? Four decades of industrialisation of the food production process, combined with terrible post-World War 2 eating habits, have somehow tricked us into thinking that feeling like crap is normal. And by normal I mean: fuzzy, sluggish, overweight and generally tetchy. We’re realising that those feelings are not normal, and that they can be very simply avoided by not eating gluten.

Follow Hall on his blog “All you can Eat for Free”