When eating out or eating unlabelled food there are two aspects to establishing whether or not the food is safe for a coeliac to eat. One aspect is to ask the question "is this gluten-free?" of the server. The other, trickier, aspect is whether or not you trust the answer, especially when it is "yes".
People generally don't know what gluten-free (GF) means, so here is a quick guide to the obvious and less obvious things that contain gluten. The intention is to send a link to this entry to people who are fortunate enough to be in the position of cooking for me!
In the UK, food labelling is now a lot better than it was and streets ahead of many other countries when it comes to listing known allergens so if you are in doubt look at the label on every ingredient!
First, the primary sources of gluten: grains and flours of:
- wheat
- barley
- oats
- rye
Second, typical staples containing or based on the above: bread and rolls, breakfast cereals, pastry, pizza, pasta, batter, flour tortillas, pitta breads, naan breads, couscous, egg noodles, cakes, biscuits, beer, lager and most grain-based spirits.
Third, anything which uses any of the above as a coating, flavouring, preservative, binding agent, thickener or bulking agent in its list of ingredients: stock cubes, soy sauce, rice wine, malt vinegar, some vegetable oils.
Things to look out for: barley malt extract, modified wheat starch, processed foods containing soy sauce, bags of grated cheese that have flour in them, potatoes coated in flour to give them added crisp when roasting or frying, sausages or burgers containing rusk, roux-based sauces, flavourings used on crisps or tortilla chips, some baking powders and cross-contamination.
Cross-contamination can either be from the methods used to produce or store the food before it hits the shelves or it can be when you are preparing the food yourself. Warnings about the former typically appear on the food packaging. The latter is up to you: be wary of crumbs or other gluten-containing foods being transferred via butter-knives or other utensils, chopping boards, work surfaces, toasters, oven trays, grill racks or from your hands. This is a serious challenge in our household where three small boys aren't fussy about how they distribute their mucky, gluten-stained paws! One of the less obvious sources of cross-contamination is the frying of chips, say, in oil that has previously been used to cook something in batter.
So what can I eat: the list above may seem long, but it is far shorter than the things I can eat. Fresh fuit and vegetables; meat and fish; butter, milk, cheese, cream; beans (check if they are in a sauce) and other dried pulses (maybe not some soup mixes); rice and quinoa; flours made solely from corn (maize), rice, potatoes, chickpea (gram or besan), sorghum (or a GF mix of these); anything baked using these flours alone; pasta or noodles made using only the above flours; cornmeal (maizemeal or polenta); plain crisps or tortilla chips; all herbs and most spices and curry pastes (check mixes); Kallo organic stock cubes; cider, wine and GF beers.
If you are struggling to find some of these things then most big UK supermarkets have a well-marked "Free-From" section these days (unlike France...) in which you'll find GF staples and some tasty treats. Just watch they aren't in that section because they are wheat, nut or dairy-free: you still have to make sure they are gluten-free.
Essentially, if a meal is prepared from fresh produce and follows the guidance above then I should be fine. If it is a processed, pre-packed meal or a take-away then the likelihood is I can't eat it.
That'll do for now. I look forward to the next GF meal you cook for me!
