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Dear listowners,

I recently began to cook risotto, which is a northern Italian dish, as a
replacement for pasta. If you have never had an expertly prepared
risotto, you have missed a truly wonderful part of Italian cuisine. I
have had  lobster risotto, mushroom risotto, and risotto prepared with
fresh vegetables. I will get around to posting a recipe at some point,
however, if you purchase the particular type of rice used, which is
called Arborio, you will probably find a recipe on the back.

The reason for this message is that I bought some mixes from the usually
very reliable maker of high quality rice and rice products, Lundberg
Farms. Their prepackaged risotto mixed looked like a real time saver, so
after my usual scrutiny of the ingredients, I bought a couple of boxes.
I was about to cook one called Garlic Primavera, when, I guess my sixth
gluten sense kicked in and I decided to email Lundberg Farms about it
before eating any, and I am very glad that I did. What follows is the
exchange including my letter, their reply and a follow up of mine, which
I will post the reply to when I get it.

My initial letter:

> Lundbergs,
>
> First I want to thank you for your help. I have Celiac disease which as
> you know is an autoimmune disorder making it unhealthy for me to eat any
> form or derivative of wheat, rye, oats or barley, because of the gluten
> protein within. When I was diagnosed I eventually learned how to eat my
> way around this problem, but for the first 6 months I existed on your
> excellent rice cakes which are the best I have ever eaten. Any way, I
> wanted to say thank you.
>
> I have since discovered the world of risotto and have been feeding my
> kids your mixes. The ingredients do not list anything that I cannot eat,
> but since you don't come right out and say that the product is gluten
> free, I thought I would write and ask. If they are, I would also be
> interested in doing a product demonstration to out local celiac chapter
> which has about 600 members. Anyhow, my email address is
> [log in to unmask] and I appreciate any information you can give me
> about these or your other fine products.

Their response: (notice the lack of detail in the answer)>

* This message sent/forwarded to you by [log in to unmask] *

Hi, Grant our Italian Herb Risotto and Garlic Primavera Risotto are not
Gluten free, as well as our Savory Mushroom Quick Brown Pilaf and
Organic Multigrain Rice Cakes. These are four items are the only non
Gluten free out of our 75 items that we make.
Thank you
Billie Martellaro

My follow up to their response:

Billie,
As a second follow up to your note, I wanted to ask you about your
Garlic Primavera Risotto. Before I wrote you, I happened to have bought
a few packages thinking that it was gluten free because none of the
ingredients list wheat, oats, rye,  barley or any of the common
derivatives that I've learned the hard way, by being sick for several
days, to watch out for. If I had not written, or been so incautious as
to have eaten this food, even though there was no mention of gluten
containing ingredients on the package, I would have been quite ill. Was
it the Parmesan cheese blend? Please let me know what ingredients in
this contain gluten and in what form so I can pass this information to
our members, all of which are trying to avoid wheat as assiduously as
they possibly can. Celiacs have an internet list server which posts
information such as this throughout the states and all over the world to
the many thousands of us who cannot ingest gluten, some who have come
close to death by malnutrition because of the very serious effects of
this disease.  I can assure you that they will be able to use this
information to not only to avoid the products they cannot have but as a
result will embrace those that they can. We consider food manufacturers
such as yourselves our greatest allies in our efforts to expand the
culinary choices we have.

Thanking you in advance for your reply,

If and when I receive a response I will post same to the list, so please
be careful and avoid the products they listed as not gluten free.

Grant

W. Grant Fergeson
2123 Dunstan
Houston, Texas 77005
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