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Hi list members,

Regarding a recent posting, and summary, on package freeze-dried food, I was
very interested in knowing more about the company making "meals in a bag". I
am a hiker and spend considerable amount of time preparing food for
everybody before going out for a multiday hike. I am very interested in
buying freeze dried food as it would reduce the burden of food preparation
each time. I had a look at Alpine Aire web site. Since they give the
ingredient list for their gluten free item, I looked through it. It seems to
me that they have incomplete information regarding gluten free ingredients.
They listed as gluten free meals containing all kings of "tricky"
ingredients such as : modified food starch, Hydrolized yeast extract,
maltodextrin, chicken and beef flavor broths, natural flavor, spices (wheat
flour is often used as an anti-caking agent in spices, especially bulk
spices), extractive of spices (the alcohol used to extract the flavor can be
grain alcohol), lecithin (what kind ? wheat ? soy ?), Chili powder (a mix of
several spices, hence possibly containing anti-caking agents), hydrolized
cereal solids (what king of cereal, wheat?), dextrose, color, butter flavor,
natural grain dextrin (grain = wheat ?), natural smoke flavor and Torula
yeats,  caramel color, etc). I did not look through all of them. While they
may have done the appropriate research and found out that some "tricky"
ingredients are indeed gluten free, I doubt this can be the case for all of
them.

I wrote an email encouraging them to pursue their effort to provide a line
of gluten free items considering how increasingly numerous we are and I
explained my concerns regarding some of their ingredients. These companies
do their best to accomodate people with celiac disease and this is
wonderful. But when they claim to have gluten free items, we just have to
think at how long it took us to master the art of gluten free eating. Unless
they ask local awareness groups or other gluten "experts" to overview their
ingredient list, it is difficult for us to take for granted their claim that
the food is indeed gluten free. They are not specialized in gluten free
eating therefore they may not be totally aware of all the information needed
prior to claiming a meal is gluten free nor of the consequences, for a
celiac, to eat gluten. This is an exemple stressing the need for third party
gluten free certification.

Caroline
Quebec, Canada

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