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By Will, December 25, 2009 1:20 am

• More posts on contaminated gluten free products. http://bit.ly/5uNzhH #

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By Will, December 18, 2009 1:20 am

• Gluten product kits have contradicted Gluten Free product claims of Great Specialty Products. http://bit.ly/8yMyQA #
• @1artsychick I put replies up on our post - that is a fair question. in reply to 1artsychick #
• @1artsychick It was invoice #41 for the goods I purchased. in reply to 1artsychick #

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By Fred, December 15, 2009 10:46 pm

Biaggi’s gets brought up anytime you get two people with CD or on the GFD together in RTP. With over 20 restaurants and a long history of catering to those with special diet needs, they have done a fantastic job of making their meals easy, safe and tasty. I ate here for the first time this past Saturday and as part of a big party, was able to get them to bring out a gf pepperoni pizza as an appetizer. It was the best fresh GF pizza I’d ever had in a restaurant; all of my colleagues said it tasted like normal pizza.

As an entree I had the Grilled Chicken Pietro. Not something I ever would have ordered 4 years ago, prior to my CD diagnosis; however there are same tastes I’ve just started to miss. It was great. Even better, it has stayed great as a left over.

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By Fred, December 14, 2009 10:33 pm

I grew up in Oklahoma where bagels were not common.  I remember eating my first one in 5th grade at the New York Bagel Store, which is now closed. It is rare for me to get hungry for a bagel, but something about being on the road a lot recently and the unusually cold weather has had me focused on finding a good GF bagel.

First up are two options; Glutino and Against the Grain. To begin with, both are worth the purchase. While I prefer the Against the Grain, they are both good. The Glutino bagels were purchased from the Whole Foods here in Chapel Hill, while the Against the Grain were bought at a Whole Foods in Bedford, MA.

Key when preparing the GF bagels is reheating, and this is where the Against the Grain may have had a bit of an advantage. They appeared to have been frozen more recently, and I was able to let them all thaw out at once. In general, they were lighter and fluffier with a consistency close to that of a conventional English muffin. I tried several thawing methods; microwaving, overnight on the counter, overnight in the refrigerator, and it didn’t seem to matter. I prefer my bagels heated in the oven and both browned well.

Against the Grain ingredients: Tapioca starch, milk, eggs, mozzarella cheese, canola oil, sesame seeds, salt, sesame oil

Glutino ingredients: Corn mix (corn starch, skim milk powder, evaporated cane juice, salt, glucono-delta-lactone, pectin, sodium bicarbonate, sodium alginate, modified vegetable cellulose), water, tapioca starch, margarine (palm oil, palm kernel oils, soy lecithin), skim milk powder, evaporated cane juice, liquid egg whites, safflower oil, liquid yolks, guar gum, yeast, salt, thiamine, niacin, vitamin B6, riboflavin, iron, calcium

Both were great. Are there other brands you recommend?

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By Fred, December 13, 2009 10:08 pm

[UPDATE 12/15/2009 4:30 PM: We received feedback from the EZ Gluten manufacturer. We were informed that the EZ Gluten reading of high is not a clear indicator of > 200 ppm. A 'High' reading is simply a relative indicator, and the only clear ppm reading from the test is the < 10 ppm of a low reading. 'High' may indicate higher or lower than 200 ppm.  Further, the 3rd party test that was used was not the 'AOAC approved' test; rather it was a modification of the AOAC OMA 991.19 that has been modified to go down to 5 ppm.  As a point of transparency, our errors are left in with strikethrough.]

Five (5) different products which had a ‘Gluten Free’ product claim from Great Specialty Products, a physical and online seller of GF products, show high levels of gluten based on seven (7) different gluten tests.  Six were over the counter test kits, one was sent off to a 3rd party lab for independent confirmation.  We purchased two products, a white-bread loaf, and a sourdough loaf from Great Specialty Products - a website (greatspecialtyproducts [dot] com), and formerly a physical store, based in North Carolina.  Both samples, when evaluated with an EZ Gluten Kit, showed ‘High Gluten’ (photos and details below).  We were present for two other samples (a dinner roll and another white-bread loaf) when other EZ-Gluten Kits were run and showed ‘High Gluten’.  Two others shared results which were not run in our presence, which both showed high gluten.  For an EZ-Gluten kit, a reading of ‘High Gluten‘ indicates 200 ppm or more.

One of these six samples was sent to a 3rd party lab for independent testing, it too found ‘High’ levels of gluten.  For the [3rd party] AOAC approved test, High levels of gluten meant 80 ppm or more.  As of this writing, seven (7) different tests show products from Great Specialty Products to be high in gluten as defined by the relevant test.

EZ Gluten has shown 'High Gluten' on 6 Great Specialty Products breads.

A summary of the results are listed below:

• White Loaf / Delivered 12.7 / Tested 12.10 / EZGluten EZG90529-9 / Result = High Gluten, >200 ppm (JN)
• Sourdough Loaf / Delivered 12.7 / Tested 12.10 / EZGluten EZG90529-9 / Result = High Gluten, >200 ppm (JN)
• French Dinner Rolls / Delivered 12.3 / Tested 12.5 / EZGluten EZG90529-9 / Result = High Gluten, >200 ppm (JN)
• Sourdough Loaf / Delivered 11.25 / Tested 12.3 / EZGluten EZG90529-9 / Result = High Gluten, >200 ppm
• Flour Tortilla / Delivered 11.25 / Tested 12.3 / EZGluten EZG90529-9 / Result = High Gluten, >200 ppm
• Multi-Grain Bread / Delivered 11.25 / Tested 12.3 / EZGluten EZG90529-9 / Result = High Gluten, >200 ppm
• French Dinner Rolls / Delivered 12.3 / Tested 12.10 / 3rd Party AOAC Quantitative Gluten ELISA / Result = High Gluten, >80 ppm (JN)

We believe the likelihood of contamination of these samples since delivery is very low; they were handled by individuals with CD or by establishments that are well-versed in GF food preparation.  Chain-of-custody for each of these samples has been recorded.  For the four samples marked (JN), we have retained frozen representatives.  All users of the EZ Gluten kits were experienced in their use and photos of their use have been retained.

Product Delivery

The products were delivered door-to-door, but had no labeling, nor an ingredient list. We called a Food Compliance Officer at the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (”NCDA&CS”), who stated that if such a delivery had occurred, it would be a violation of North Carolina State Law.  NCDA&CS further stated that the same laws would be applied to an online retailer as would those that applied to a physical store.  North Carolina law also supports Federal law in relation to following GMP and allergen labeling.

Re-Packaged Desserts

In past weeks, Great Specialty Products had an area on their site titled, “Gluten Free Specialty Desserts.”  Two desserts from this area had been delivered to a customer with the original wrappers from the primary manufacturer, an un-associated private-label food manufacturer.  When the original manufacturer was called, they stated that their products were not gluten free.  Website photos from the non-gluten free photos were being used to promote the Great Specialty Products desserts, again the Great Specialty Products were represented with a Gluten Free product claim.  The original manufacturer immediately set about correcting the situation.  It appears that this portion of the site has now been removed, an archive of the page can be found here.

Notification

Prior to this post Great Specialty Products was informed that based on the results we had received that their products contain gluten.  We attempted to ask questions about ingredients and the source of their product claims.

Final Comments

Several products from Great Specialty Products have been to have high levels of gluten in contrast to their product claims of 'Gluten Free.'

As someone with CD on the GFD, I am immensely grateful to any group that makes GF products.  We recognize that kits have their weaknesses, that suppliers may provide ingredients that are out of spec, and that accidents do happen.  We routinely run EZ Gluten kits when it is difficult to tell if ingredients have gluten or not.  The kits were run in this instance after the products were delivered unlabeled without an ingredient list.

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By Fred, December 5, 2009 5:45 pm

Sushi is being identified through genetic means

The WSJ just published a great article on the use of DNA ‘barcodes’ for speciation of food products.  Unfortunately, species identification is much simpler in animals than it is in plants.   While the methods employed are not immediately valuable, they do show that clear identification of food products and their components continues to grow as a societal issue.

The article, reported by Robert Lee Hotz, outlines how rapid genetic sequencing is increasingly being used to identify animals for food, environmental and other reasons.  He focuses on a recent test of 68 samples from 31 sushi restaurants in New York and Denver (why would you eat Sushi in Denver?) which found that restaurant patrons weren’t always getting what they ordered.  Lower cost, endangered, and even potentially dangerous fish species were served in their place.

A similar survey in Canada of 18 sushi restaurants found that half the orders were mislabeled.  A 2004 study by the University of North Carolina estimated that 3/4 of all snapper sold in the US was mislabeled.

This also matters for food labeling and species conservation.  Current guidelines restrict the label Grouper to 33 species of fish.

This has profound implications for all of us who are concerned about the presenece of gluten, or other foods, in our diets.  We are not alone.  Almost as important as the health, safety and species conservation aspects of this article is the fact that there are clear economic implications.  It matters what people eat; there is money to be had for those who pay attention.