The Halloween party: one question, my own bag (Zoe, Episode 5)

A Halloween party with coeliac disease often goes like this: big shared bowls, nobody kept the packets, and you are hungry. Zoe is sixteen, she has coeliac disease, and for Tim's Halloween party she has a plan that takes one bag and one question. Episode 5 is about shared party bowls, the packet, and eating with everyone without making it the topic.

Own bag

Tim's Halloween party starts at seven. Yara has been ready since five, in a vampire cape over her bomber jacket. Zoe's costume is a small witch hat balanced on her bun, which she says counts. She also has a paper bag: a sealed bag of crisps she read in the shop, and her own sweets. Not because she expects Tim to get it wrong. Because she likes to eat when everyone else eats.

The bowls

Tim's kitchen is a landscape of bowls. Crisps, pretzels, a mountain of unwrapped sweets, and a dip with pretzels standing up in it like fence posts. Yara dips a pretzel, then goes straight into the crisps with the same hand. Zoe watches the crumbs travel. Pretzels are made with wheat. The dip has had pretzels in it all evening, and now the crisps bowl has a few crumbs of its own. Zoe doesn't sigh. She has seen this landscape before.

One question

Zoe finds Tim, who is in skeleton face paint and, as usual, one step ahead. She asks her one question. “Have you still got the packets?” In a bowl, a crisp has no label. The packet is the only thing that knows what was in it. Tim pulls a neat stack of flattened bags out from beside the bin. “I kept them,” he says. “I thought you'd ask.” This is why Tim gets invited to things.

Fresh from the bag

Zoe reads the back of the crisps packet. No gluten grain highlighted in the ingredients, no “may contain” line. “These ones I can have,” she says. “Just not from that bowl.” Tim has a second, unopened bag of the same crisps. Zoe reads that one too, because each packet gets its own read. He tips it into a clean bowl before a single pretzel hand gets near it, and hands it to her like a trophy. The pretzels, the dip and the unwrapped sweets she leaves alone. No packet, no label: that's what her own bag is for.

Party, not a project

By nine nobody is thinking about bowls. There is a film nobody is watching and a game everybody is losing. Zoe has her own bowl on her lap and her own sweets in her bag. Yara, who has learned a thing or two tonight, holds out her palm instead of diving in. “Can I have one of yours?” Zoe tips two into her hand. “From the bag. You're learning.” “I'm a vampire,” says Yara. “We learn fast.”

Packets, not bowls

One question covers most parties: have you still got the packets? Bowls can't tell you anything. Packets can. Read each one, eat from a fresh bowl just for you or straight from the bag, and bring your own for the rest. Then go and lose at the game like everyone else.

For you, straight

The packet knows, the bowl doesn’t. Coeliac UK explains that UK and EU labelling laws require cereals containing gluten to be clearly shown on food labels, and that the cereal must be emphasised in the ingredients list, for example in bold. That is the UK and EU rule, so read snacks from other countries with that in mind; our Halloween plan, linked below, covers US labels. Once the crisps are in a bowl, that information is gone, which is why the one question is about the packets. Coeliac UK’s key tip is to read the label every time, because recipes and manufacturing processes can change without warning.

Crisps: check. Pretzels: no. In Coeliac UK’s gluten-free checklist, potato and vegetable crisps and flavoured popcorn are under “need to check”, and so are sweets. Pretzels and snacks made from wheat, rye or barley are under “not gluten free”. For a product without a gluten-free claim, Coeliac UK advises not eating it if the pack has a “may contain” statement for cereals containing gluten.

Shared bowls travel. Coeliac UK’s advice at home is not to let your gluten-free food get contaminated by food that contains gluten, for example with separate condiments to avoid breadcrumbs, or at least clean cutlery for shared spreads. A dip with pretzels standing in it works the same way as a shared spread: pretzels are made with wheat, so their crumbs can end up in the dip, and from there on any hand that goes into the next bowl. A fresh bowl just for you from a new bag, or the bag itself, is the easy way round it. Unwrapped sweets have no label to read, so bring your own.

Sources: Coeliac UK, “How to read food labels”, the Coeliac UK gluten free checklist (May 2024) and Coeliac UK, “Cross contamination”, all checked on 11 October 2026. We inform, we don’t diagnose: for medical questions your doctor or dietitian has the last word.

Read on

• Are crisps gluten-free? Plain ones usually, check the flavours
• Cross-contact, part 2: the shared surfaces where gluten actually travels
• A gluten-free Halloween for a coeliac child: a plan that keeps the fun
• Zoe, Episode 4: feeling fine is not the same
• Zoe, Episode 2: the kebab shop after school
• All Little GF Adventures episodes