More people are developing sensitivities to foods like wheat and dairy products. Cutting them out may improve your health - but is life worth living without fresh bread and cream cakes? Stephen Lewis investigates.

Stress, pollution and junk food may be the realities of busy modern life - but they can also wreak havoc with our bodies. Increasingly, people in the UK are discovering they suffer from food intolerances: most typically aversions to wheat and dairy food.

One of the main reasons for this - as staff at the York Nutritional Laboratory can attest - is diet. In particular, the growth of convenience foods, which are often bulked out by wheat and cereal substances, can trigger unpleasant reactions.

While no two food intolerances are the same, symptoms can include asthma, chronic fatigue, breathing difficulties and muscle stiffness, as well as bloating and digestion problems.

But whether it is wheat, gluten, dairy products or something else that is the cause, the solution is the same - avoid the foods which trigger the reaction.

Those with coeliac disease, for instance, should avoid gluten permanently, while people with dairy intolerances should switch to soya products.

The downside is that cutting out those ingredients means getting a mouth-watering meal on the table can be a problem - they are present in many of our everyday staples.

People suffering from a gluten intolerance need to cut out durum wheat (used in pasta), barley, sausages, malt, starch, rusk, beer, bran, wheat flour or oats while wheat intolerance means no bread, noodles, cakes, pancakes, scones, prepared sandwiches and soups.

An intolerance to dairy products keeps butter, cheese, cream, yoghurt, ice cream and other dairy derivatives off the menu.

So what's left?

John Graham of the York Nutritional Laboratory - which has developed a food intolerance test to help people identify foods that may be causing them a problem - admits a daily diet without dairy products and wheat can be hard.

"If you imagine it happening to you, it would be quite a big upset in your life," he says.

By careful shopping at your local health foods store or even supermarket, though, it should be possible to find substitute ingredients which mean you can keep your diet varied and interesting even when you can't eat ordinary bread, cheese or cream eclairs.

Now a number of specialist cookbooks are available on the market to help you do just that.

Antoinette Savill, author of the recently-published Gluten, Wheat and Dairy Free Cookbook, says it is possible to eat imaginatively without putting your health in danger.

"It is impossible to buy ready-made foods," she admits. "But the gluten, wheat and dairy-free diet is a very healthy diet. What my book is saying is you don't have to have a horrible time - you can eat healthily and normally like everyone else."

Antoinette's book includes recipes for cakes, puddings and muffins (see below) - all delicious indulgences you may have thought you'd waved goodbye to forever.

"All I've done is taken normal food and changed it to use an alternative flour and non-dairy products," she says. "You want to make it possible to eat these things and to ensure they taste how they would if you made them with plain flour and dairy."

Anyone trying to eliminate wheat, dairy and gluten from their diet, of course, knows the problems of finding safe ingredients. Savill points out that as the number of people with food intolerances increases, the number of specialist stores and supermarkets offering alternative ingredients will also rise. So keep pestering.

u The Gluten, Wheat and Dairy Free Cookbook is published by Thorsons priced £12.99