Gluten-free diet and current situation in the restaurants

The theses called "Gluten-free diet and current situation in the restaurants" is focused on the issues associated with the availability of gluten-free meals in eating facilities of various types and with the possibilities of customers with gluten intolerance when eating out. In the first theoretical part, a "celiac" disease is described. It is compared with other forms of gluten intolerance there, too. Next part is dedicated to food allergen labelling because this topic is very close to the gluten-free diet. This part also characterizes various types of eating facilities and I depicts the territories where my research was made (the city of České Budějovice and the city of Klatovy), finally. The aim of this thesis was to take a close look at the offer of gluten-free meals in various types of eating facilities in the above mentioned cities and to examine the cooks´ knowledge of the principles of gluten-free diet. Here I compared nutritional values of gluten-free diet one-week menu with balanced diet recommendations, too. At the very end of the theoretical part I transformed some meals from restaurants´ standard menus into gluten-free version. In the practical part, a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods was applied. There were 20 eating facilities included in the research 10 in the city of České Budějovice and 10 in the city of Klatovy. The quantitative method was used to analyze the menus of the given eating facilities, the qualitative method, on the other hand, in the form of semi-structured interviews with the representative of these facilities. The results of the analysis of the menus were put into the Excel chart. The interviews were interpreted through mind maps. When compiling a one-week gluten-free diet I used a computer program "Nutriservis Professional". Finally, I compared the data from the above mentioned program with the figures recommended for the balanced diet. The analysis of the restaurants´ menus brought the following results normally, eating facilities don´t offer as many gluten-free meals as meals containing gluten. However, a number of naturally gluten-free meals in restaurants´ menus is not so bad. Moreover, the analysis of the interviews suggests that there is no problem to agree with the cooks on preparing a gluten-free meal if it is not in the menu. What is not satisfying is allergen labelling in restaurants´ menus and the cooks´ knowledge of gluten-free diet, too. The comparison of gluten-free and balanced diets implies that they do not differ too much as for the basic nutrients, energy, proteins, carbohydrates or fats. To conclude, this fact proves that gluten-free diet is adequate to the balanced diet