Fairmont Hamilton Princess executive chef Thomas Frost has a special stake in a new alternative diet menu being introduced in all Fairmont hotels. Mr Frost's wife, Gillian, was diagnosed with celiac disease seven years ago. The Frosts know first hand how hard it can be to find a restaurant that takes special dietary needs seriously.Celiac disease is a digestive disease that damages the small intestine and interferes with absorption of nutrients from food. People who have celiac disease cannot tolerate gluten, a protein in wheat, rye, and barley. Gluten is found mainly in foods but may also be found in everyday products such as medicines, vitamins, and lip balms. It is thought that 30 percent of the population may be gluten sensitive.The Fairmont's new lifestyle cuisine plus menu, caters to guests with specific diet-dependent conditions such as celiac disease, diabetes, heart disease and gluten allergies, as well as dietary preferences such as macrobiotic, raw and vegan diets.“My wife was diagnosed with celiacs after she gave birth to our daughter,” said Mr Frost. “Celiacs is often triggered by something. It could be something dramatic or something quite simple. She was losing all the baby weight. When the baby weight went she kept on losing weight. She went to the doctor and they thought it was a dairy allergy. In the end, they took a biopsy of the inner lining of her stomach and they found out from that that she had celiacs. When you have celiacs, the villi on the inside lining of the stomach lies flat and stops your body absorbing nutrients. No matter how much you eat you lose weight. Once we found out she had celiacs, we knew what we had to do to keep her healthy, and that is what we have been doing for the last seven years.”Mr Frost said his family relies heavily on unprocessed food, because it is normally gluten-free and easy to find.“If it is fresh you are in good shape,” said Mr Frost. “A lot of processed food has flour in it. A lot of foods you don't even think about have gluten in them, such as worcestershire sauce, or soy sauce. At home we maintain a gluten-free environment to avoid any cross-contamination.”And he said the Frost family was no worse for wear because of the dietary restrictions.“We all eat a lot healthier because of it, because there is very little processed food involved,” he said. “A lot of times we will have salads with protein in it.”He said the Frosts tend to eat in the same restaurants in Bermuda, because they know the chefs that understand celiacs.“When we eat out overseas it can be a bit of a chore, especially if they are busy,” he said.Now, at least they know they can eat in any Fairmont restaurant.“Offering the lifestyle plus menu is a company-wide initiative for the well-being of our guests,” said Mr Frost. “Gluten isn't a lifestyle choice, it is an allergy, but it is so prevalent now we decided to add it into the lifestyle choice menu. A lot of our dishes will have some form of gluten in it. We could give them a steak but maybe the sauce might have gluten in it.“With the [lifestyle cuisine plus] menu...you know all the way down the line it is gluten-free. It takes all the worry out of eating out.”Mr Frost said they'd been to restaurants and been told that the chef understood their dietary needs, only to be given a bread roll by the busboy.“It is a chain reaction sort of thing,” he said.Asked whether the food on the special menu at Fairmont hotels was more expensive, Mr Frost said it depended on what was ordered.“We price it the same way we do any other meal,” he said. “It depends on the food and the amount of time spent preparing it. It depends on the product.”For more gluten-free lunch ides, check out http://glutenfree.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/gluten-free-lunch-to-go-ideas-for-what-to-pack/