The Zeer Blog

The gluten-free sandwich is not an easy or cheap food to come by. Not only do you have to do your research to find a delicious gluten-free bread or wrap, but you also have to find gluten-free fillings, too… like gluten-free mayo, mustard, and of course, deli-meat.

To make it a little easier to find gluten free deli meats you can eat, we’ve used  Zeer Select to unearth some potential gluten-free finds to beef up your lunchtime.

Applegate Farms Honey & Maple Turkey Breast
Not only are all Applegate Farms turkeys vegetarian and grain fed from birth, they’re also antibiotic free, too. So next time you find yourself munching on some deli meat from Applegate Farms, give them some props for providing natural, hormone-free deli meat that is also gluten and casein free!

Wegman’s Oven Browned Turkey Breast
Remember Thanksgiving? Boy a lot had changed since going gluten-free. This gluten & lactose free oven-roasted turkey breast a great find for those of us looking for a lean turkey breast that is also affordable. And for those of us who miss thanksgiving, don’t worry it’s also great with cranberry chipotle cheese.

Hormel Deli Roast Beef
Hormel isn’t exactly known for its natural foods, but their Deli Roast beef contains no artificial ingredients and is gluten & MSG free. If you’re concerned about cross-contamination from using the slicer at your local deli, then this pre-packaged roast beef is great in a pinch.

Boar’s Head Boneless, Skinless, Maple Glazed Roasted Chicken Breast
Thinly sliced chicken breast really does not get enough credit at lunch-time. This gluten and saturated fat free maple glazed chicken is a sweet and flavorful deli meat that won’t make you drowsy like turkey can. That means you’ll be full, happy and awake when you get back to your desk after lunchtime.

Buddig Extra Thin, Original Corned Beef
Buddig company has many gluten-free options but one of their best is their extra-thin original corned beef. This affordable deli meat is a great & reliable deli comfort food that makes two pieces of millet bread actually seem like a sandwich.

While looking through some of the new products uploaded this week to the Zeer Database, I found a product that to me, struck me as a perfect example of a product that is labeled as gluten-free but contains some questionable ingredients: Michael Season’s Honey Chipotle Multigrain Chips

For someone newly diagnosed, a similar product might be difficult to comprehend. They may ask, “How can products like this, which contains ingredients I’ve been told to avoid, still be gluten-free?”

The truth is many dieticians advise their patients starting a gluten-free diet to take the strictest, safest route to recovery and avoid any products & ingredients that are questionable. As a person begins to understand the diet, many people begin to discover there are many gluten-free products that are safe, but hidden in their grocery store.

At Zeer, we have a very specific process that helps people cut through these mixed messages on a products packaging.

Determining the Problem Areas

Let’s take a look at the product in question: Michael Season’s Honey Chipotle Multigrain Chips. These light and crunchy chips are the gluten-free equivalent of Sun Chips (which contain wheat and therefore are not gluten free).

It contains ingredients such as natural smoke flavor, natural flavors, maltodextrin, & oats - four ingredients that we’ve singled out as ingredients that those with Celiac Disease should know more about .

Since the manufacturer states, in text printed on the product package that the food is gluten free, we have set the gluten free safety status as “labeled as gluten free.”

We do this because some products contain questionable ingredients, but contain less than 20 parts per million (ppm) of gluten and therefore, under the new standard proposed by the FDA, would be considered “gluten-free.”

However, it’s understandable to remain cautious. This is your body and your choice. You want to be certain that this product is safe for you.

Our number one goal at Zeer is to help people get the product information they need to make their own decisions. Even if a product is labeled gluten-free, we always try to display all the information we have available so you can see where questionable ingredients clearly.

Zeer can help decipher mixed messages on a products packaging.

As you can see from the image above, these chips contain natural hickory smoke flavor, an additive that can utilize a gluten-containing grain or by-product in the manufacturing process. Since the product is labeled gluten-free we can assume that the Hickory Smoke Flavor used did not utilize a gluten-containing ingredient such as Malt Flour in their process.

But what about oats? We have labeled the ingredient oats as red because although oats do not contain gluten naturally (they contain the protein, avenin), they likely have been contaminated by exposure to other gluten-containing grains such as wheat, barley, or rye during manufacturing. However, there are gluten-free oats available on the market that manufactures could use instead of cross-contaminated oats.

Products that use gluten-free oats will usually be labeled gluten-free, which is why we don’t hard-code oats as yellow which means “may contain gluten.”

Since Michael Season’s has labeled this product as gluten-free, we can assume that the oats used in this product are certified gluten-free oats.

As you can see, Zeer makes it easy to review all this information, prepared by a team of Celiac Disease advisors, quickly and easily so you can make the decision if this product is right for you.

We all know that Twitter can be an awesome resource for finding out about what your friends are up to or for following Celebrities or bands you admire. However, it’s also a great tool for following food brands you admire as well.

As I pointed out in our Food Brands That Tweet: Why More Consumers Should Be On Twitter , twitter makes it easier to have a conversation with the food brands that you like but following food companies on twitter isn’t always a 24/7 marketing fest.

In fact, following food companies can also keep you in the know when a particular food brand has some exciting news, new recipes, coupons or contests available.

On our Zeer Select Twitter account we tweet and re-tweet gluten free topics we find interesting, especially from manufacturers who contribute gluten free goodness to the grocery aisles. Together, we’ve picked our favorite gluten free food follows so you can benefit from the great deals and contests we’re finding every day.

Enjoy!

10 Gluten Free Food Manufacturers You Should Follow

Kinnickinnick

When Kinnickinnick had a big announcement to make about their factories becoming 100% nut free they turned to Twitter to share the happy news. That means that people who live with multiple allergies suddenly had over 20 new products suddenly available to them. Without twitter, many of them might never have known!

Pamela’s Products

Pamela’s does a great job of letting its customer’s know about events, tastings, and appearances they’re doing to get the word out about their products.

Enjoy Life Foods

Enjoy Life CEO uses Twitter to let his followers know about special deals posted to the website – super helpful since most of us are probably checking our Twitter feed more often than Enjoy Life’s website.

Kind Snacks

Kind Snacks recently began selling their gluten-free snack bars in Starbucks. After Starbucks got some bad press from discontinuing their Gluten Free Valencia Cake and replacing the option with Kind Snacks, Kind Snacks turned to twitter to help repair some of the demand created from the decision by offering its followers a taste of their product, a very classy move from a very company that’s obviously extremely dedicated to making its customers happy.

Honest Tea

Some products are great because they’re socially conscious, too. Honest Tea is not only USDA certified organic but they also remind their followers to take advantage of their ultra-cool, music-lover’s giveaways.

Blue Bunny

I don’t know about you, but I miss secret clubs. Blue Bunny knows this and offers their follower’s a chance to get free stuff just by saying a secret password.

Dagoba Organic Chocolate

We count on food manufacturers to know the ins and outs of their products. We also want them to provide us with new and fun ways to use their products. Dagoba knows that their organic chocolates are awesome but also understand it’s hard to find the need for it on a hot sunny day like the 4^th of July.  Recently they tweeted a great recipe on how to turn their chocolate bars into frozen hot chocolate. The best part is, the recipe is easily gluten free when you use gluten free hot cocoa mix.

Bobs Red Mill

Bob’s Red Mill is one of the better companies that twitter. Not only are they super responsible responding to customer tweets, they also make following them fun and rewarding with their daily contests and trivia questions.

Lara Bar

Sometimes following a food company gives you an inside scoop on what’s going on behind the scenes, like the launch of a new product.

Stonyfield Farms

In this economy, it helps to know that great companies are still hiring. Stonyfield farm recently tweeted about their job opening in NH. That’s one way to attract someone who really cares about what they’re doing as a company.

Nothing says “It’s summer!” like the sound of an ice cream truck’s hypnotizing melody curling around the neighborhood.  But for many of us, what used to be a daily highlight during the long, hot days of summer vacation, now is just a reminder of food we just can’t eat anymore.

Fortunately, with Zeer Select you can see alternatives for old favorites and find out what’s really gluten free. We’ve taken a closer look at some of our old summer-time favorites and unearthed some potential gluten-free alteratives that you and your family can enjoy this summer.

Blue Bunny Assorted Fudge Bars

Diana’s Dark Chocolate Banana Babies

Haagen-Dazs Vanilla & Almond Ice Cream Bar

Klein’s Real Strawberry Flavored Ice Cream Bar

Edy’s Assorted Fruit Pops

Since the Zeer launch in early 2008, we have been inspired by the support and passion that our members and visitors have shown.  We’ve heard from many people who say they’d like greater insights into the foods they are eating, that they want help reading a product’s packaging. Today, we are proud to introduce several exciting enhancements to Zeer that are directly in response to these enthusiastic requests.

A Simpler, Easier Way to Find Safe Food

We are excited to announce the release of Zeer Select, the easy way to find gluten free food. Zeer Select is a database of over 30,000 food product that helps people stay safe, save time, & learn the gluten free diet. Zeer Select is a monthly subscription ($14.95 a month) where members can:

• Instantly see the gluten-free safety status for over 30,000 products in our database
• Discover gluten free alternatives for any product
• Search gluten free foods by category, brand, product, and UPC.
• View highlighted problem ingredients and manufacturer’s statements to help you learn why products are safe or not.

We began all this work from a belief that finding great food information online should be easy. For many, this may only be a minor inconvenience, but for individuals living on a gluten free diet, finding food that is safe and also delicious is essential. Now individuals on a gluten free diet have help in making sense of the 60,000 ingredients and 30,000 products from over 10,000 manufacturers.  In Zeer Select, we have assigned a Gluten Free Safety Status to over 30,000 products. Subscribers can search or browse the entire database to find specific products or browse by categories such as entrees, condiments, sauces, etc.

We have also engaged a group of leading medical and nutrition advisers and food researchers with deep personal and professional experience in celiac disease and the gluten free diet to help in the process of assigning gluten free safety status’ to products. We have analyzed every ingredient (and synonyms) in every product for problematic ingredients, considered issues of cross contamination and have manually reviewed (in duplicate) every manufacturer’s statement/allergen warning on every product in assigning the Gluten Free safety Status.

Zeer Select is updated continuously unlike books and static lists which become out dated very quickly. Each week 500 products are added or updated so that our users have the best information to make their decisions.

To check out all the exciting changes we’ve made to Zeer, login now, and let us know what you think.