Jules Shepard & her gluten-free 16-tier wedding cake / Photo by Charles Votaw
What do you get when a passionate gluten-free baker, entrepreneur, and small business owner goes to Washington? You get Jules Dowler Shepard building a sixteen-tier gluten-free cake at the Embassy Suites Hotel and Convention Center to raise awareness and lobby for gluten-free labeling laws.
Shepard will tell you that this first Gluten-free Food Labeling Summit in Washington was a success, but it’s just the beginning, and she didn’t do it alone.
Shepard partnered with fellow celiac and athlete John Forberger to co-found 1in133.org and host the summit. While Shepard used her own birthday cake recipe and donated the gluten-free flour for the eleven-foot cake, Vance’s Foods donated dairy-free milk powder, and Earth Balance donated the shortening and soy milk.
While the cake, the largest ever gluten-free cake, made a statement of its own, the real statement was the need for gluten-free food labeling laws. The Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act of 2004, which legislated the requirement for food allergy labeling guidelines, also required the FDA to implement rules for voluntary gluten-free labeling guidelines by August 2008.
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