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By Fred, June 29, 2009 7:30 am

Every time someone with Celiac disease eats, there is a risk that the food will make them sick. Every bite is a potential food poison event.  There are lots of ways to look at this risk, but as we talk with experts in food science, healthcare and nutrition, it increasingly looks like this risk is composed of two subcomponents: ingredient risk and contamination risk.

Ingredient risk is the risk that we may not know what the food is made of. Do we know the ingredients? Do we know where they came from? When were they harvested? We mitigate ingredient risk by having a list of the ingredients and knowing that those individual ingredients do not contain gluten. The major method for understanding ingredient risk is through disclosure. Programs like the FDA’s work on gluten labeling are important. However, it is equally important that dangerous ingredients also be labeled. Knowing what foods are dangerous is just as important as knowing what foods are safe- and along those lines it is equally important to label the safety of a food ‘Unknown.’

Contamination risk is the risk that even if the ingredients of the food are known, that there has been an accidental or undocumented use of gluten. Was the facility appropriately cleaned in between runs? Was the grill cleaned between usage? Does the chef understand how important these issues are? We mitigate contamination risk through education. Programs like the NFCA GREAT plan or many of those facilitated by the Gluten Intolerance Group are helpful in making sure the community at large understands these issues. Public policy work such as the Codex and GMP are also important in making sure that food is kept safe.

When we break out these two risks, their interdependence becomes very clear. If our goal is to understand the food risk of a product, we’ve got to start with ingredient risk. If we don’t know what the ingredients are supposed to be, we can’t understand if the presence of gluten was accidental or not. If we don’t know the ingredient risk, we can’t determine if there is any contamination risk.

This framework lets us see that contamination risk might not be the kind of risk we can ever completely eliminate, merely reduce. Given that scenario, focusing on ingredient risk and minimizing the contamination risk is the best procedure to increase our overall health.

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By Fred, June 28, 2009 7:53 pm

Friday’s Wall Street Journal had an article talking through the recession’s impact on selection at major retailers.  Per the authors Ilan Brat, Ellen Byron and Ann Zimmerman, “a few of the largest retailers are expected to slice the assortment of products in their stores by at least 15%, industry executies and analysts say.”

How does that affect the 1% of us who have Celiac disease and the 10,000 gluten free products available to us?  In an era of shriking shelf space and increased focus on the bottom line, are major retailers and grocers going to find our numbers attractive from a financial perspective?

Being Gluten Free has gotten easier every year since I personally was first diagnosed.  This refrain is repeated by everyone I speak to who has been diagnosed for longer periods of time, even those going back to the 1970s and 1980s.  There is an increased amount of knowledge about the healthcare aspects of Celiac disease, knowledge in the food industry about dietary recommendations and compasion from others that these dietary restrictions are not easy.

This economic downturn will make it harder.  In these periods of adversity, it is important for our community to organize further and tackle the most important issues in front of us, and in our mind that is clear and precise information about the presence of gluten in foods.

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By Will, June 26, 2009 1:20 am

• @BrianFDonahue Great to see the Greek #GF card worked. I did a similar download for a recent trip to the Czech Republic. in reply to BrianFDonahue #
• Thank you again Pei Wei diner for a wonderful gluten free lunch! #gf #gluten #celiac. #
• @HypnotizeU Never heard of a peanut butter issue like that. Any idea if the protein in peanut butter looks like gliadin or glutenin? in reply to HypnotizeU #
• @hilarydavidson Great to see you on Twitter! We are big fans of yours! Great travel writing on being gluten free. in reply to hilarydavidson #

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By Fred, June 19, 2009 8:37 pm

Dr. John Floros, head of the Department of Food Science at Penn State University and a member of the FDA’s advisory board, served as a moderator on a Nanotechnology in Food conference that we attended.

He made some interesting comments about Nanotechnology in food, which I will attempt to paraphrase:

Microbiology existed before we knew about it. We found out about these microbes 100 years ago, they caused a great debate in how we look at food but we did not stop eating. Food science is quantifying something that we already do every day, which is very different than information technology or other areas of study. Nanostructures exist in food already, how do we regulate and study new ones? How do we regulate their introduction?

This feels like a grandfathering issue. We are studying about something that we do every day. We learn more, but how do we apply that knowledge to practices that have existed for so long that they are part of our cultural wisdom? Should we challenge that conventional wisdom? These are significant cultural issues that are not easily addressed.

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By Will,

• @CitysearchBOS Elephant Walk in Boston is great and very Gluten Free friendly! in reply to CitysearchBOS #
• @spreedly We are back up now. That was actually the issue that had us down last night at the presentation. Thanks for your help. in reply to spreedly #
• @tbarkow We’ve been real happy with Spreedly in reply to tbarkow #
• @gfree_abby I love the peanut Thai Spicy Kitchen noodles! in reply to gfree_abby #
• Great Paula Deen recipe, we made it all gluten free; http://bit.ly/WYdS2; It tasted like candy-coated turkey. Fantastic. #
• @ntalbott No problem. Made us realize we need to cache that on our side before we call on your API. in reply to ntalbott #
• Just had a great hamburger, no bun at the party. So thankful neither of my kids has to be gluten free. Thank you Kimball Genetics! #
• @Nyhima What kind of GF cookies? in reply to Nyhima #
• Just finished my second 100 pack of corn tortillas this year. Hispanic heritage? No, just celiac, and I eat wheat / gluten free. #gluten #
• RT @celiacdisease FDA Issues allergy alert on undeclared Milk and Wheat in clam chowder and corn chowder http://bit.ly/iZtUB #
• It has been a wonderful gluten free weekend. Looking forward to this week. Any recommendations for Oklahoma City GF dining? #
• Great breakfast of Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free cornbread (made last night), Yoplait banana creme pie and cottage cheese. All gluten free. #
• @GlutenGossip Hidden graham crackers sounds terrible! Had a salad once where they put croutons on the bottom. Who does that? in reply to GlutenGossip #
• Off to Pei Wei for lunch and some gluten free spicy chicken. #
• We’ve got a 9 week old. Neighbors offered to “Cook a gluten free meal” AND brought over the labels! A W E S O M E. #
• @Michelle2008az Liked your blog posts. Chipotle is a personal favorite for gluten free dining. They are everywhere, always helpful! in reply to Michelle2008az #
• @BGIRRL11 Let me know if you remember the brand on the GF Ravioli - good gluten free pastas are always helpful to know. in reply to BGIRRL11 #
• @maybememoxie Are there any Trader Joe’s out your way? They have a lot of very good gluten free products. in reply to maybememoxie #
• #gluten - Who makes the best gluten free mac ‘n cheese? My personal favorite is the Tinkyada noodles. Any other favorites? #
• @GlutenFreeBee I’m going to be there tomorrow. Thanks for the guidance. Terminal E has a Qdoba, but that is a long way from C. in reply to GlutenFreeBee #

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By Fred, June 18, 2009 1:31 pm

How often in the next year are you going to get sick through accidental gluten ingestion? What is it worth it to you to cut that number in half? What if we cut it to a tenth? What if instead of thinking in terms of accidental ingestions per year, it was per decade? Gluten is out there, it is going to find you. Vigilance is key, and part of our service to our customers is to provide you with the best statistical information possible about what products and locations you should avoid to increase the probability that you stay healthy.

There are lots of people like you. They are diligent about how they talk to restaurants, they call food manufacturers before eating packaged goods and when in doubt they will purchase an over-the-counter food test to make a final arbitration about the gluten status of a product. I personally kept a database that served as a precursor to our current product. The value of what we do at Juno Nutrition is that we allow the gluten free community to aggregate that data. If a location doesn’t give consistent responses about what is gluten free, then that is interesting information to have. If a gluten test gives a different indication about whether or not a product is GF than the food labeling, then that is important information to share.

Juno Nutrition is more than that – we are the advanced troops to helping restaurants understand what GF products are available. When they see that other restaurants are able to be GF with the same menu items, we move from debating whether or not a recipe can be created to knowing it is possible. We want a world where it is easy to avoid gluten and easy to find GF foods; Every day our entire team focuses on making that dream a reality.

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By Fred,

Ross Gatlin, one of the owners of Triumph Dining, and I had lunch a month back. He’s a great guy and the Triumph Dining series is one of the best places to start if you are looking for a written food guide. We were talking about over-the-counter gluten tests and he noted that he had done a test on Soy Sauce which showed it was safe. Yikes! Wheat is the first and primary ingredient! What is going on here?

An earlier posting on ‘The Gluten Avoidance Minefield’ lays out a framework for dealing with the seemingly anomalous Soy Sauce testing results. Let’s lay out what could be going on;

1. The test might not have worked. If we were using a kit, it could have been too old, it might have gotten too hot, it could have been made improperly. To prove this, we’d run a duplicate test. [We know this wasn’t the case, more information below.]
2. What are we testing for? R5 tests focus on glutenin. Skerritt tests for gliadin. What kind of tests did we use?
3. Did the food processing affect the protein? Wheat in soy sauce has gone through a good deal of processing, including hydrolysis, the process by which proteins are broken up into smaller protein components.

After talking with several food scientists, including chemists, microbiologists and pharmacologists, it turns out the answer is a combination of #2 and #3. Glutenin is fractured in most methods of Soy Sauce preparation. A Skerritt test would have shown a dramatically different result.

The next question that we are led to is; If the proteins have been broken up into smaller amino acid chains (amino acids are the building blocks that make up a protein), what are the health effects? Is it now okay? And here we run into a wall. It isn’t clear. Full experiments haven’t been run. Isolating the impact will be a difficult challenge. This is why the gluten issue is such a complex area to address.

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By Fred, June 17, 2009 1:30 pm

The food industry is a wonderful thing. Having had the opportunity to work in and study many different industries, it is always the more mature, more entrenched industries that maintain a staggering diversity of supply chain components and businesses. Food is an old, old business.

It all starts at the farm. Crops are grown, animals are raised. After harvest, those components are created into ingredients. Some are primary ingredients; some are broken down and reformulated into flavorings and scents. These components are augmented by additives and preservatives and then either made into packaged goods to be sold at grocers or into materials sold to the restaurant industry. Every part of this supply chain has numerous players, numerous inputs and varying degrees of knowledge about their inputs and end products.

This is an amazingly complex system that comes together each day to keep all six billion of us fed. There are many points where gluten can be introduced into the supply chain, numerous ways of testing to ensure that the product does not have gluten and in the middle of this difficulty we’ve got to acknowledge that the gluten free population is amazingly tiny when compared to the six billion. That being said, there is hope and help. Food manufacturers understand this issue and as nutrition-addressable healthcare issues continue to arise, the need for accuracy and source-ability in their products continues to increase.

This isn’t an issue that can be resolved overnight, but with the right quantitative approach and long term view, it is an addressable issue.

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By Fred, June 16, 2009 1:28 am

We’ve had a little time to reflect on our trip to the IFT conference in Anaheim, CA which began on June 7, 2009. Since then we’ve recalled a certain electricity that was in the air about the Anaheim convention center. Maybe it was our proximity to Disneyland. Maybe it was the beautiful Southern California weather. A major contributor was that this is a group of individuals who love their job.

And why wouldn’t they love their job? Everybody eats. Even the term ‘Foodie’ sounds cool.

And you know what, they were legitimately bummed out when I told them that I was, “one of the wheat-free gluten-free Celiac people.” I’ve been explaining this to people for several years now, and I’ve never been anywhere that the reaction was more sympathetic. The food scientists at IFT love their job, they love to eat and they know what a change in lifestyle it must be to have your diet so dramatically constrained.

This is an opportunity for the gluten free community. Look around at your local schools and see if they have a food science program. Is there a tradeshow coming up near you? The food manufacturers are receptive to our message – they get it more than we realize. Given that we are the minority, it is our responsibility, if we want their help, to put forward a logical and articulate series of requests for how they can help us. That’s part of what we do everyday at Juno Nutrition.

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By Fred, June 13, 2009 10:59 am

When I talk with a group of non-GF people about our business, I usually open with the question of, “How would you feel if one of your next 100 meals was going to contain a low grade of food poison? It may make you ill for a day, for a week or increase your likelihood of several varieties of cancer. It may effect you right away, or it may take time to activate. What is it worth to you to avoid that meal?” This is what we encounter each and every day. It is a minefield.

Imagine that you’ve got to walk across a field. Are there mines? How do we avoid them?

It depends a little about where we are. If we’re in a former war zone, then yes there may be mines. So, location matters. There are certain grocery store aisles where you are going to find gluten. There are certain restaurants that are going to have gluten in every product. You’ve got to know the ground to know the proper level of prudence. If we start to map out locations, then we can try and understand how much trouble we are in from the outset, and what locations we should flat out avoid.

What kinds of mines are we looking for? Let’s say it is a particularly devious mine that is both anti-personnel and anti-armor. For good measure, let’s say that some of them are simply one or the other.

If we’ve got a test that shows the anti-personnel mines, do we know that we are safe for the anti-armor mines? Vice-versa? It’s important to note that many of the commercial methods used to test for ‘gluten’ are actually testing for one of the protein sub-components, gliadin or glutenin. These tests are okay if we know that these two proteins are always bound together, but we know for a fact that this is not always the case. When we say something is gluten free, or that it does not have gluten, it is important that we present ourselves with an appropriate audit trail so we can know exactly how we know what we know.

Let’s say that we’ve got our minefield identified and that we have gone in and swept the mines. (A favorite Youtube clip is here.) Is it still a minefield? No, but it isn’t a “not-minefield” and pronouncing the area safe may be a bit premature. Rather, what we probably should do is proclaim that it was previously a mine field and state clearly the process we used to clean the minefield up. What if our process only got rid of anti-personnel mines? What if we detonated all of the mines, but there was still shrapnel in the soil? It may be safe to cross with heavy boots, but we wouldn’t want to play a barefoot soccer game, would we?

This last point is an important one. Proclaiming something ‘safe’ if it had dangerous precursors is a tricky endeavor. Imagine that the detonator caps in the mines survived. The mines are now much less dangerous, but the mine subcomponents are now smaller and still potentially harmful. Food processing technologies, such as hydrolysis, may change the gluten such that is difficult to measure, but the protein subcomponents may still be creating a biological reaction that is detrimental to our health.

Getting rid of mines is an extremely difficult proposition. So difficult that the best way to deal with mines is to prevent them from being put down. Identifying products that have a gluten precursor is an important part of understanding product safety for the gluten free population.