Take That frontman Gary Barlow has revealed that he and his family overhauled their diet to accomodate his wife Dawn with her health issue that she’s had for years
Gary Barlow made a huge change following his wife Dawn Andrews’ health diagnosis.
The Take That singer and Dawn met in the 1990s when she was working as a dancer with Take That. The pair tied the knot in 2000 and share son Daniel, 24, and daughters Emily, 22, and Daisy, 15.
Dawn discovered she was diabetic 12 years ago, prompting the family to overhaul their diet. Gary was trying to figure out how they could “get flavour” into their cooking and after “ages”, the penny dropped.
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It also meant he had to stop eating some of his favourite Italian food, pasta, because of the carbohydrates in pasta cause Dawn’s blood sugar levels to spike. So Gary and the family discovered a love of spices, reports Gloucestershire Live.
Appearing on the Table Manners podcast with Jessie and Lennie Ware, Gary said: “When Dawn first got diabetes it took me ages, I was talking to so many people and we have a lot more information now than we did then 12 years ago, but I was like, ‘how the hell do I get flavour into food? ‘”
“And I slowly realised, and you’re going to laugh at this, but it took me ages – spices – that’s how we get flavour out of food.”
Since then, the family have got into aromatic cuisine such as dahl, a curry dish rich with split legumes and coconut milk. Gary also enjoys using naan bread to accompany the meal, and occasionally includes chicken in the recipe.
Pasta isn’t off the menu completely, but Gary is unimpressed with the gluten-free pasta options available for his wife. He said: “She doesn’t eat pasta unless it’s gluten free but half of them, now, we’ve found that most of the gluten free stuff is worse for you than the stuff with gluten in.
“I’ve often found taking out the sugar means, ‘we’ve put a load of c*** in’.” According to Diabetes UK, people with diabetes often try to avoid pasta as it can cause a blood glucose spike, and they report that freshly cooked pasta causes the largest glucose spike.
Reflecting on his early romance with Dawn, Gary shared an anecdote with Jessie and Lennie: “We were in Manchester, and we’d been to a club, and we’re all piled in this van on the way home.”
“We were in the very back of this van, and we were sitting right next to each other, had my arm around her and I just thought, this is it kids, I’m going in.”
