Until food allergies are taken seriously by big business and the public many more like Natasha and Hannah will die
IT has been eight years since 15-year-old Natasha Ednan-Laperouse suffered a severe allergic attack and died in front of her father on a packed holiday flight to France.
She had eaten a Pret a Manger baguette which, unbeknown to her, had sesame seeds baked in to the bread.
Since then, her parents Nadim and Tanya have set up the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation and campaigned tirelessly for better food labelling and staff training.
Yet last week, they were holding the hand of distraught mother Abimbola Duyile as she attended the East London inquest in to the death of her 13-year-old daughter Hannah Jacobs — the 50th victim to die of a severe food allergy in the past ten years.
Hannah died in February after taking a single sip of a Costa Coffee hot chocolate containing dairy milk.
Knowing her daughter was severely allergic to it, her mother had told the barista it needed to be made with soya milk, but the coroner found that staff had not followed the correct process.
In a statement, Abimbola said she and Hannah had always been diligent in managing her allergies and, consequently, she had never suffered a serious reaction previously.
“Having heard all the evidence over the last week, it is clear to me that although the food service industry and medical professionals are required to have allergy training, this training is not taken seriously enough,” she says.
Indeed, it emerged that Costa employees had to take an online allergen quiz that one employee had failed 20 times before passing, while another’s grasp of English was so limited they had to use Google Translate to read instructions.
Costa Coffee, which is owned by the Coca-Cola Company, said it had “listened to everything the coroner has said” and will “respond appropriately”.
But it beggars belief that these deadly mistakes are still being made within certain corporations that, as Hannah’s mother points out, fail to grasp the severity of allergies or train their staff accordingly.
I have witnessed it first hand with my own allergy to papaya which, while not life-threatening, causes me to break out in painful red welts all over my body.
Yet despite filling out an allergy form at a spa, I was given a facial containing papaya oil.
And it was in a drink on a transatlantic flight despite the steward telling me it wasn’t.
The 50 who have died in the past decade did so because of allergens such as nuts, fish, dairy, sesame and eggs — and yet there are still so many people who don’t take it seriously or, worse, think it’s all in the mind.
Onus on the bosses
It took Natasha’s avoidable death for Pret to go further than the regulations required by introducing full ingredient labelling, including allergens, to all products freshly made in its shop kitchens.
And now Hannah’s avoidable death will no doubt lead to Costa rethinking staff training over allergens.
Many coffee shop staff are barely adults themselves and whoever made the fatal error that cost Hannah’s life will live with it for ever.
But the onus of legal responsibility is on the bosses of these vast corporations to make sure that every possible procedure is in place to ensure that no one dies so needlessly again.
Charles' royal convoy
IF packing light was an Olympic sport, I’d win gold every time.
I can go away for a fortnight with just hand luggage.
King Charles has started his two-month break in Balmoral and two full-sized removal lorries arrived at the gates with his belongings.
Crikey. It’s been claimed that, when staying with friends, he sends ahead a van with his “bed, furniture and even pictures” and reportedly takes his own toilet seat and loo roll wherever he goes.
But sending lorries to his own 167-room castle?
The mind boggles as to what else he could possibly need.
Wanderlust for Clara at Wanderers?
FOOTBALLER Rodrigo Gomes has left Braga, in Portugal, to join Wolverhampton Wanderers.
His girlfriend, 19-year-old model Clara Motta Guedes is clearly coming with him as she told her 61,000 Instagram followers: “From Portugal living in Wolverhampton.”
She’ll hardly notice the difference.
Big wink
A SUN headline this week read: “Waitress wins £41k for boss winking.”
Horrified, I thought: “He should be locked up.”
Then I realised it was an “I” and not an “A”.
Delia ‘Volvo’ of cooking
TV chef Delia Smith gave an interview at the weekend in which she described herself as the “Volvo” of cooking – “reliable but not very exciting”.
She added that she had gone “through the mill” of criticism in her career because, “I wasn’t entertaining. I was just about teaching you how to cook, this boring lady explaining step by step.”
Given that The Sunday Times has just published its all-time bestsellers list and Delia is the only chef with three cookbooks in the top 100, it’s fair to say she’s had the last laugh.
Labour Louser
GIVEN the new Government’s majority, one imagines transport minister Louise Haigh was in a favourable position to negotiate over the pay demands of train drivers.
But no.
The former Unite shop steward gave them a 14 per cent pay rise without a single concession on behalf of travellers and taxpayers.
Then, less than 48 hours later, train drivers’ union Aslef – which has historically donated around £922k to the Labour Party – announced a 22-day strike on the East Coast Main Line stretching across every weekend from August 31 to November 10.
If all of the above applied to the Tories, one can only imagine the apoplectic cries of “incompetence” and “sleaze” from Labour quarters.
Go for round 2, Tom
BACK in the day, when phone cameras didn’t exist, Tommy Fury might have got away with snogging a woman who wasn’t his fiancee.
It would have been a “bro code” moment among those who accompanied him on the lads’ trip to North Macedonia.
But in 2024, everyone has a recording device, so despite denying to Molly-Mae Hague that he’d misbehaved, she was sent “upsetting” footage – presumably of him kissing the woman in a packed nightclub – and their relationship is over.
Tommy’s a nice enough lad and, having won his past ten fights, clearly good at boxing.
But out of the ring he’s been an idiot to lose the smart, hard-working young woman he shares a one-year-old daughter with.
And if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll now put up the fight of his life to win her back.
Orl a little cheeky
“TAKE a moment to digest this,” says actor Orlando Bloom to his seven million Instagram followers, posting details of Unicef’s first child vulnerability climate index.
In another post, the Unicef Goodwill Ambassador urges world leaders to “take immediate steps to drastically reduce emissions”.
Good for him, using his platform to help those less fortunate.
But cut to last week and he’s jumping out of a helicopter in Sardinia with fiancee Katy Perry . . . purely for fun.
He probably planted a tree (or whatever) to offset it, but still.
He’s got a Blooming cheek.
Harry full of fibs
ON the last day of his quasi-royal tour to Colombia with wife Meghan, Prince Harry called on those in positions of power to help stop the spread of online misinformation.
“It comes down to all of us to be able to spot the true from the fake,” he said.
Does this include the couple’s interview with Oprah Winfrey which, depending on who you ask, contains anything between ten and 30 “lies”.
No2 is MY No1
THE most misheard expression in the UK is “wriggle room” instead of “wiggle room”.
Followed by “escape goat” and “nip in the butt”.
And song lyrics often get mangled by people too, one being the man who thought Abba’s biggest hit included the line, “Dancing Queen, only seven teeth”.
But my absolute favourite malapropism is that of my mate Nadia Sawalha who, much to all our amusement, spent years saying “self-defecating” instead of “self-deprecating”.
Then a stranger finally corrected her and spoiled all our fun.