Would you like a gluten-shaker? Answer = No.
No, we don’t want a gluten shaker on your table. That would be a bad, unused, item. However, in reading two articles today from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal on efforts to curb the use of salt in foods, we see a template that could be applied to the food industry’s use of gluten.
Per Ilan Brat and Maurice Tamman’s well-researched article, “Food Makers Quietly Cut Back on Salt: Companies Find Consumers Respond Better When Sodium-Reduction Isn’t Emphasized on Labels”, “Salt is an inexpensive ingredient that enhances sweetness and diminishes bitterness in flavors. It keeps packaged foods fresh longer, plumps up canned vegetables and helps hold together hot dogs.” For anyone with CD or who pursues the GFD, these words sound familiar. Salt is an inexpensive ingredient, like gluten. Salt enhances the product, in the same way gluten enhances the chewiness and texture of foods. Salt is important in extending shelf-life, and we are all well familiar with the challenges of keeping GF food products edible without the assistance of refrigeration.
Salt is a mineral. Gluten is plant derived. Salt has merited its own book and has arguably driven the course of world history. Grains, the wheat, rye and barley, which produce gluten, made the fertile crescent and agriculture changed humanity’s course.
The articles make great points; (i) consumers expect low-salt products to taste worse, but are okay with it if phased in, (ii) general health improves by reducing salt to minimal levels, (iii) everyone wins with salt added only where necessary, (iv) there is increasing awareness at the policy level about the negative impacts of too much salt being used for the general population.
For the gluten-avoidance community to catch up with the salt-avoidance community we need better quantification of the negative impacts of gluten. We see the beginnings of that for those with CD in insurance-related studies, but we will benefit from other studies of other specialty diet populations.
In closing, we highlight an excerpt from the WSJ article with salt modified to [gluten] - think about what it would mean:
Consumers’ prejudices about reduced-salt [gluten] products and taste are also complicating food-makers’ efforts.
In one 2007 test in Holland, Unilever found that consumers expected to like one powdered-soup mix purported to be lower in salt [gluten] less than another, even though they were actually identical, says Mr. Balentine, of Unilever.
“Once you start saying you’ve taken salt down [gluten out], it’s basically equal to, ‘It’s not going to taste good,”‘ he says.
New technology is driving many salt [gluten] reductions by helping maintain the saltiness [texture] of products with less sodium [no gluten]. Some companies are deploying new meaty-tasting compounds that boost saltiness flavor without sodium [gluten] or cooling agents that make the tongue taste salt [texture] better. Others are using materials that smell salty [have the same texture] without having any sodium [gluten], says Mr. Eilerman, of Givaudan.
It makes for a nice read, doesn’t it?
Comments (0) 
