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I recently found a wonderful tasting salad dressing that I thought was
gluten free.  It had cider vinegar and all virtually all the other
ingredients were simple and straight forward.  The only one I couln't
identify was "shoyu."  Since this is made by an American compnay (Annie's
Homemade Recipes from Vermont) and there are FDA rules about what you cn
call things in ingredient lists, I assumed it was a raw ingredient I was
unfamilar with (like a seaweed thing or something).  I called the company
yesterday to check and it turns out that shoyu is a fancy Japanese name for
soy sauce, and of course the kind they use contained wheat!!!!!  I was
furious!!!!!

I thought that in the U.S. the FDA rules, though far from perfect, at least
protected us from companies using unfamilar terms without listing their
ingredients.

The company says that the term "shoyu" is used a lot in food found in "natural
food stores."  We should all watch out for it.

Debra Boutin
Ithaca, NY
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