A Brief History of Our Achievements

First global open-ended research call attracts world-wide interest from 41 applicants.

We handed in our "Cost of Living" petition, with over 20,000 signatures, to 10 Downing Street to lobby for gluten free prescribing to be retained in England.

Coeliac UK supported research worth £2.2 million, across our 10 research priorities.

1,700 health care practitioners received our information and support about the diagnosis and care of people with coeliac disease.

Our "Cost of (Gluten Free) Living" research report was published and downloaded more than 2,000 times

44,887 people completed our online self-assessment – over 90% of them were advised to be tested for coeliac disease.

Our new combined "Live Well Gluten Free" app launched, providing information on over 190,000 products and 3,000 Coeliac UK "GF" gluten free accredited venues.

Our new "Teen Vitual Club" started to support and connect young people aged 12-15.

Started the collaboration on a 3 year EU research project worth €1.3 million, investigating gluten in fermented and hydrolysed products.

Hosted our first online Research Summit with coeliac disease experts which identified gaps in existing research, and directed the focus for the future.

Coeliac UK supports 62,000 members 43,000 members used our Gluten Free Food Checker app to help them shop more easily.

We partnered with the "Connect Immune Research" initiative to join up and advance research into autoimmune conditions.

Our helpline team answered over 20,000 enquiries.

We had 118,000 views of the tailored information and advice we published on our "Coronavirus Hub".

Our Food and Drink Guide lists more than 150,000 products suitable for a gluten free diet.

Our Gluten Free Food Checker app wins "Best Use of an App" at the MemCom Membership Excellence Awards.

For our 50th Anniversary, we launch a Research Fund with a £500k commitment from Innovate UK and £250k from Coeliac UK's reserves.

Our Gluten Free Accreditation (GFA) Scheme spans over 3,200 eating out venues that go the extra mile to avoid cross contamination.

Public awareness of coeliac disease reaches an all-time high of 80% in the UK, largely due to our work.

Live Well Gluten Free magazine launches for members.
Our Gluten Free Show in Wales attracts over 1,400 people.

We host the first gluten free food industry networking event to encourage innovation and improve gluten free consumer offerings.

Coeliac UK launches the ambitious diagnosis campaign "Is it coeliac disease?" and our self-assessment symptom checker, aiming to find the half a million undiagnosed people in the UK.

We launch our Gluten free Guarantee (GfG) retailer scheme to improve gluten free product availability. Asda and Morrisons both sign up.

Our first app is launched to help members find gluten free food wherever they are.

The Gluten Free Accreditation scheme and trademark are launched to improve the experience of eating out for people affected by coeliac disease. Domino's and Pizza Hut become the first catering chains to take up the scheme.

We launch our Member to Member mentoring scheme for newly diagnosed patients.

We start the fight to protect prescribing of gluten free food in England, with some successes.

Research funded by us shows the high extent of misdiagnosis of coeliac disease as irritable bowel syndrome.

Our research into the conditions needed for gluten free catering to comply with new EU labelling law proves it's possible to provide safe gluten free dishes in a commercial kitchen.

We help the pharmacy industry develop a more cost effective approach to prescribing.

We work with Springboard, the catering education charity, to develop and launch online catering training for gluten free food.

We successfully lobby and petition to have diagnosis guidelines for coeliac disease published by the National Institute of Clinical and Health Excellence (NICE).

We work with the EU to ensure that new law setting gluten free labelling thresholds is not excessively restrictive for people with coeliac disease.

Coeliac UK embraces digital – launching on social media and creating an electronic version of our Food and Drink Directory.

We work with the Food Standards Agency to implement a change to the gluten free labelling standard, making it easier to shop for gluten free food.

We establish a Cross Party Group on coeliac disease in the Scottish Parliament.

We collaborate to secure a £9 million grant from the EU as part of a pan-European programme to develop a new point-of-care diagnostic tool.

We secured £500,000 funding to improve diagnosis and management of coeliac disease.

We hosted our first medical research conference in London to share the latest insights on the condition with healthcare practitioners and researchers.

We established an All Party Parliamentary Group of 34 MPs and Peers at Westminster, to provide a voice in Parliament for people with coeliac disease.

We initiated our Health Advisory Council – a group of medical experts to inform our work and maintain the high quality of our information services.

"The Coeliac Society" is formally renamed Coeliac UK.

We host four gluten free living events – 2,500 people attend.

Coeliac UK meets with national coeliac associations from Spain, Italy, and France, in Barcelona, to form the Association of European Coeliac Societies (AOECS).

Coeliac UK first registers the "Crossed Grain" symbol as a trademark.

We supported 21,000 members.

We supported 12,000 members.

The "Crossed Grain" gluten free symbol is designed by Coeliac UK member Michael Carpenter (he gifted the copyright to us in 1986). It starts to be used to make it easier to find gluten free foods.

We distribute 30,000 copies of our food list – the beginning of the Food and Drink Directory.

Our first local support group opens in Birmingham, England.

Coeliac UK (originally The Coeliac Society) is founded by Elizabeth Segall, mother of a child with coeliac disease, and Peter Benenson, who had the condition (and is also known as a founder of Amnesty International).

Coeliac disease was first described nearly 2,000 years ago by the Greek physician Aretaeus of Cappadocia, who used the term "coeliac" from koiliakos ("abdominal") for patients with diarrhoea and malabsorption.

In 1888, London physician Samuel Gee (13 September 1839 – 3 August 1911) recognised the disease — mainly in young children — as food-related malabsorption, though he mistakenly recommended toast as treatment.

During World War II, Dutch paediatrician Willem Karel Dicke observed that children with coeliac disease improved when wheat was scarce, identifying gluten as the cause and establishing the gluten free diet still used today.