Gluten Flour

I recently heard of someone I know, who newly diagnosed with coeliac disease, was baked a gluten free cake by a kind friend. Having only been gluten free a short time, he was missing a lot of his usual foods & gladly accepted, only to become very ill indeed. What went wrong?

The friend used a product called "Gluten Flour". Gluten flour is more or less wheat flour with much of the starch removed, leaving MOSTLY gluten!! While there are legitimate uses for gluten flour, for a coeliac, there is not much you'd want to avoid more than this! If you yourself have coeliac disease, you're unlikely to fall into this trap as you probably are (and should!) check labels carefully, but as you saw in this case, it was an ignorant friend, so make sure you are extra careful when teaching friends how to not poison you!

What really got me annoyed at this was that I have found that a local Countdown supermarket has decided to locate this "Gluten Flour" bang in the middle of their gluten free section.

What adds insult to injury as that Healtheries, the manufacturer of "Gluten Flour" also produce a gluten free rice flour, which the same Countdown decided was best located at the opposite end of the same aisle as the gluten free section -right above the wheat flour. I don't try to make sense of these decisions, but it's a good reminder to be extra careful when friends cook for you!

Posted by Rory on Jun 6th, 2010 under Awareness of Gluten Allergy | Permalink | Comments(0) | Tweet | Facebook