There’s been a lot of talk over the past few years about the FDA’s inaction on creating standards that manufacturers of gluten-free packaged food must follow. Most industrialized countries around the world are light years ahead of the U.S. in this respect. But now, the FDA is moving forward with a new 20PPM standard that should take care of self-regulating manufacturers who are more interested in profit than quality. Let’s see how well this new standard is regulated — I’m hopeful it will be.
Below is an article from Boston.com/Health giving a lot of coverage to this issue — while I’m happy that they’re bringing attention to this issue, I’m always a little disheartened by statements like this, “There is no reason to avoid gluten if you don’t have celiac,” said Antinoro, “but plenty of my patients with the condition tell me they feel wonderful after switching off gluten.” There’s no evidence that gluten-free diets offer any health benefits to those who don’t have celiac.” I couldn’t disagree more with this as I’ve never met a single person who went on a truly gluten-free diet who didn’t come out the better for it. I do agree with their statement about the reason some people do better than others is that they swap out the cookies, cakes, and starchy snacks with fruits and vegetables. Most of it just comes down to common sense.
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By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff
“Foods that have “gluten-free” on their label may actually contain significant amounts of gluten — enough to cause gastrointestinal symptoms in those with celiac disease who have an intolerance to the wheat protein. That’s because the US Food and Drug Administration never established a standard for the label, leaving it up to manufacturers to define what they mean by gluten-free.
Now, though, the agency is moving forward with a new standard that manufacturers will be required to meet before they can slap on the gluten-free label. Federal officials are proposing that cookies, bread, and other wheat products making this claim can contain no more that 20 parts per million of gluten, a level below which gluten can’t be detected by standard lab tests…”
