Categories
Gluten-Free for Beginners

How to Tell if a Food Is Gluten-Free

I just finished updating one of the most popular (in terms of page-views) posts on this website – our post on gluten-free infant and toddler foods – and it brought up something that’s important to share…

It’s the question of how to tell if a food is gluten-free…

There’s really only one totally safe and reliable way to check if a food is gluten-free or not…

And that is by checking with whoever made the food to find out – whether that’s a manufacturer like Gerber or a cook in the kitchen.

Go to the source…that’s always the best way.

I’m bringing this up because it’s really common for people to search online and use blogs or other non-source websites to find out if a food is gluten free.

It’s like the shortcut. Just a quick post to my favorite gluten free Facebook group (with a picture) asking – “hey, do y’all know if this is gluten free?”

I see this constantly…

And I get it.

Some people respond with GIYF

(google is your friend) – in other words, look it up yourself!

But even that can lead down a dozen different rabbit holes with no clear answer.

Here Is How to Check the Gluten Free Status of Any Food

When I set out to write the Gluten-Free Shopping Guide…I realized right away that if I was going to make that kind of resource available and share it with others…

…the information inside would need to be absolutely reliable.

And the only way I could ensure that the foods I listed as gluten-free were indeed reliably gluten-free was to talk directly to the manufacturers of all those foods.

YOU should also make a point of checking if a food is gluten-free by going straight to the source.

Here’s How to Find Out From the Source if a Food is Gluten-Free

It’s usually easy to find out this information from the manufacturer…

The easiest way is to go to the manufacturer website. Let’s take Gerber for example…

(Follow along if you want)…go over to Gerber.com and start looking around for an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) or Common questions.

In this case, the link is all the way at the bottom of the page and it’s called Common Questions…

gerber3

If you click that link a new page opens and you’ll see questions organized by topic…

It actually took me a little while to figure out how the questions were organized, but then I figured out that I needed to scroll to the right a little to see more topics…

gerber4

Almost every food manufacturer I’ve come across has this information spelled out on their website.

Not all of them are as clear about labeling practices…

Not all foods end up being gluten-free…

But at least I know straight from Gerber, in this case, how to tell if my baby food is gf or not.

Worst case scenario is when the website doesn’t tell you anything – or at least you can’t find it – in that case, you have to pick up the phone and call.

And be sure if you call that you can either tell them specifically which product you want to know about…or ask if you can have a list of their gluten-free foods (along with any information they can provide about their manufacturing facilities etc.)

This way, I’m not relying on information on someone’s blog that’s dated four years ago…

That’s it!

Happy Gluten Free