When six-year-old Black Country boy Chris Wilson was told sweet treats were strictly banned due to a food intolerance, he began baking his own cakes to take to birthday parties.

The youngster has now become a dab hand in the kitchen as the latest member of his Wolverhampton family to be diagnosed with coliac disease, an allergy to gluten which prevents sufferers from eating common foods ranging from bread to biscuits without being ill.

Birthday parties, dining out and even trips to the supermarket are a potential minefield for the Wilsons, of Fairview Grove in Wednesfield.

The condition affects one in 300 people but Chris, his mother Louise and 16-year-old sibling Adam are all sufferers.

Now the entire household, including father Steve and children Simon, 15, and Rebecca, eight, has switched to a gluten-free diet.

Mrs Wilson, aged 40, a nurse at New Cross Hospital, said: “Chris is getting to the age that when he goes to a party he takes a lunchbox.

“He wants to be like everybody else now. He takes a little cake he has made himself because he can’t have a birthday cake.

“When he was first diagnosed he ended up on Coco Pops for about a fortnight.

“We literally came out of the doctors with this list of what you can’t have. You spend hours looking at the packaging, you have to check every single thing. When you first start out it’s a nightmare.”

Coeliacs suffer chronic stomach pains, sickness and diarrhoea if they eat any flour, bread, rolls, buns, biscuits, cake, pastry, pasta and breadcrumbs made from wheat, barley, rye or oats.

In 2004 Wednesfield sufferer Janet Foster hit the headlines when she revealed she travels more than 200 miles to buy gluten-free fish and chips from Leeds.

Anyone wanting to join the Wolverhampton Young Coeliacs group, of which Chris is a member, can contact Sue Mills on 01902 732276.

By Stuart Pollitt