GF DF EF SF Products

For people with multiple food allergies, finding new convenience foods is exciting (and sometimes fattening since we eat a lot of natural foods instead).

Common ready-made snacks and condiments like a chocolate bar, mayonnaise, canned soup, or frozen meals don’t exist in some food allergy sufferers’ worlds.

Many allergen-free products still contain just that one little ingredient that make them off limits, like cane sugar, soy, milk, or egg. This is why many dairy alternatives, sauces, snack foods, and candy are taboo.

Thanks to the creativity that flows in a free marketplace, I’ve had the pleasure of trying several new products that are worth checking out.

If I ever have an adverse reaction to a product I discuss, I’ll attach a comment to the original blog. There are times that products appear to be completely safe and then make me take a day or two off work later. I’d love to hear others’ reactions as well.

Tonight I had my first yogurt in five years. I will rarely buy this because it has sugar in it, but for an occasional yogurt fix, it was excellent! There was nothing “alternative-tasting” about it. It had the flavor and zing of a real yogurt.

So Delicious’ yogurts are dairy, soy, and gluten free. They are made from coconut milk and contains pre- and probiotics. My digestive system’s jury is still out on this one, so please do not consider this a bona fide endorsement at this point, just a FYI.

Hot sauce is another item that some special diet people have to go without. Sauces are often made with grain vinegar, which can make people with celiac disease or gluten intolerance ill.

Some gluten-free people will eat Heinz ketchup and drink alcohol that is distilled to the point that supposedly there’s no gluten in it. But there are ketchups, mustards, and other items out there made from cider vinegar that don’t involve that risk.

While I can’t certify the Frontera brand as risk-free because their products are made in a shared facility– one that also manufactures allergens– they say that they thoroughly cleanse all equipment before their allergen-free products are created.

Normally I do *NOT* eat foods made in a shared facility as I’ve gotten very sick that way before, but their email was pretty convincing. I’m proceeding with caution and going to recommend that they try for GFCO certification.

Frontera’s habanero hot sauce should be sold in gallon jugs, not tiny bottles. It’s not nearly hot enough for me, but the flavor is fantastic. I started telling others about it to find that they already have it in their fridges.

As someone who puts sliced habaneros on my BLTs, I appreciate a good use of spicy peppers. This sauce is versatile enough to be used on just about any kind of meat. I’ve enjoyed it on pork and fish. I used up the first bottle in about four days and just bought several more bottles.

I’ve discussed Daiya cheese before. I thought it made me sick the first time I had it, but that could have been a processed meat I ate simultaneously. It’s vegan and free of dairy and soy.

To me this is a very neutral product, more of a filler than anything. It’s not great-tasting, but it’s not bad. But besides Dr. Cow, it’s the only cheese of its kind out there right now. It stretches and melts like normal cheese.

Earth Balance dairy-free soy-free vegan margarine is also unique that I know of. It tastes just like tub butter/margarine and you can bake with it. This product was huge news for the folks who had been stuck with squeezy faux butter for awhile, which is good, but doesn’t act like normal butter when you cook with it.

So as time goes on, more and more allergen-free products are showing up in stores. It appears that food manufacturers are realizing just how many “special people” are out there.

While a new butter, hot sauce, or yogurt may be no big deal to those eating the standard American diet, these products are can be revolutionary for those on special diets. Now if only the prices of allergen-free products matched those of their average counterparts.

In the allergen-free realm, a plain loaf of bread can cost $5, a jar of nut butter $10, a standard size bottle of vanilla $10, and so on. We may eat healthy as our allergies force us to buy a lot of high quality, additive-free, organic products, but trust me, our wallets feel it!

*************************************************************************************

I hope they never find out that lightning has a lot of vitamins in it, because do you hide from it or not? -Jack Handey

*************************************************************************************
©2010 H. Hiatt/wildninja.wordpress.com. All articles/posts on this blog are copyrighted original material that may not be reproduced in part or whole in any electronic or printed medium without prior permission from H. Hiatt/wildninja.wordpress.com.