I was quite delighted to find that General Mills is offring a line of gluten free goods.  They have a new website to tell us all about it at http://www.liveglutenfreely.com. They have soups which I am especially interested in along with the normal baking products.

But, then, I wondered.  Where can I actually find these products in Long Beach?  Or better, said, can I even find these items in Long Beach grocery stores!

Long Beach grocery stores don’t have health food sections which is where special items marked gluten free are often found. Well, at least, in other cities.

I recently spent the past 16 years of my life living in the mountains of Colorado and shopped in Colorado Springs. Now, those grocers knew that if they offered a health food section of 4 - 5 rows with good foods of all kinds, not just GF foods, then people will shop these aisles.

An believe me, Co Springs has a Whole Foods and Vitamin Cottages and other places to get GF and health foods so you can’t say Long Beach grocers cannot provide health food sections in their stores due to the abundant competition in LB/Lakewood….but they don’t.

I was amazed to find out that Long Beach grocery stores do not have a clue on how to provide healthy alternative foods to their customers. I guess they all just want us to go to Whole Foods and Trader Joes and Vitamin Cottages, & I guess, they don’t need our business because they don’t even try.

Oh, one store does. You can find GF crackers and other foods marked GF at Fresh and Easy Stores. I love Freash and Easy Stores.  You can find them around LB and surrounding areas  here.

As for finding these General Mills GF items….well, I’ll let you know. I doubt I will find them on the shelfs at my local Vons/Ralphs’s/Food4Less and so on. But if I do, I’ll let you know!

And, please, if you find any place in LB/Lakewood who carries them, post a comment here so we can all find them with ease.

One more thing. The General Mills website has a locator for these items but all I could get was Manhattan Beach, CA stores because, for some reason, they kept not recognizing my address which I take to mean there is no where close by carrying these items.

I just came across Trader Joe’s gluten free list of their store brand products (actually they won’t claim the term, ‘gluten free’ but rather say, “no gluten ingredients used”).

The list is really handy but I truly do not understand why Trader Joe’s does not visibly mark their GF products on their labels. Everybody worries about getting sued, I guess.

There is a disclaimer at the beginning of the lists attempts to explain why they might not want to label their foods directly as gluten free.

Here is how thier disclaimer reads:
“Please use this guide at your own risk. Unless a brand name is specified, it is Trader Joe’s Private Label.
Please Note - this guide is a sampling of many of the products we carry in which No Gluten Ingredients are used, but it is not a comprehensive list. We do our best to keep the information as up to date and as accurate as possible, but we do introduce and discontinue products all the time, and some products may be available based on season or region, so keep your eyes open and always read product labels.

Here is some info fron the list with my comments in italics….
• Our suppliers follow Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP’s) to segregate ingredients on shared equipment and/or in the facility. This is good to know since many products state that the items was produced in a facility that also manufactures wheat products.
• Always read the label - ingredients and suppliers may change. Good advice.
• Gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley and rye and their derivatives such as malt or spelt.  We all already know this.
• As a general rule of thumb, dairy, juice, meat and produce do not contain gluten or any gluten derivatives. Okay…maybe but I always read the labels.
• Under Trader Joe’s Brands, ingredients listed as “natural flavors” or “spices” do not contain gluten or gluten derivatives. This is SUPER good to know since this is where we celiacs get caught never being sure when reading any labels…not just Trader Joe’s.
• Use common sense and remember the motto: When in doubt, leave it out. I would call this a ‘covering their ass statement
• The most recent product additions will be in bold, blue typeface

Below is the link to get this 7 page list.

Just a note: You should right click the link belows and save to you computer to download or just click to open ina window on your computer and print from there.

You will need Adobe PDF reader installed on your computer which most people do  have. If not, it free to download and install. Just search online for it using the keywords,  free adobe reader.

Here’s that link for the list : http://www.traderjoes.com/attachments/NoGluten.pdf

Here is the link to Trader Joe’s website page where I got the list: http://www.traderjoes.com/static/lists.html (opens to a new window on your computer).

Good eating!
Honor