<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>
 
     Hi, everybody!  I have some good news and bad news about
Tropical Source chocolate bars made by Cloud Nine, Inc. (I have no
connection to the company).  These come in lots of flavors, but I am
referring only to "Wild Rice Crisp" and "Red Raspberry Crush" in
this post.
    Good news:  This company has taken the trouble to add the
following information after the standard list of ingredients:
 
"Non-dairy formula processed on dairy equipment.  Contains small
amounts of casein (milk derivative) and lactose due to processing
equipment.  No dairy in recipe.  May contain nuts.  Gluten free."
 
This was an all-time first for me--I've never seen such specific
references to the manufacturing process on a label before and plan to
write to this company to thank them.
 
    Bad news:  neither my boyfriend nor I took the time to READ THE
LABEL because we've been buying these chocolate bars for months.  At
some point, the label changed without our realizing it.   We were
assuming that "nondairy" on the old label meant free of casein and/or
lactose.
 
    I gave up eating chocolate a couple of months ago because I
developed an apparent allergy to it after some time on the GF diet,
but my boyfriend continued to consume Tropical Source chocolate.  He
is gluten and casein intolerant and last night suffered an extremely
severe reaction minutes after eating the chocolate.  We don't know
why he has been able to tolerate this product up until now, or why
the reaction was so bad, and we are pretty sure (as sure as you ever
can be under these circumstances) that the problem was with casein
rather than gluten, especially since the label asserts "gluten free"--
but the lesson we learned remains the same:
 
     No matter how long you have been buying and trusting a particular
product, keep checking the label!!
 
    By the way, these are really good chocolate bars if your diet is
GF only.  Not appropriate if you have problems with casein, soy, or
(obviously) chocolate.
 
All the best,
Jeanne <[log in to unmask]>