Brookside Dark Chocolates

[Trish01]

I am newly gluten free and wondering about Brookside dark chocolates, like the açaí and blueberry flavor.  These are marked gluten free, but I haven’t felt well after eating them.  I have also seen posts online from 2014 that other people had issue with them.  It looks like the labeling was much less clear back then though, so I don’t know if the company changed anything about them.  I am wondering if anyone has had them recently?  Thanks!

[cristiana]

Hi Trish

I am in the UK and see these are for sale here, also marked gluten free (they look good!)  I have never tried them but I just wanted to say to you that occasionally certain products are recalled  because gluten sneaks in somehow.   It can be worth contacting the manufacturer with the batch number and point out that you are having issues and see what they say. 

I bought some ostensibly soup recently and had classic symptoms after eating it on two separate occasions.   It just had to be the soup, so I dropped a line to the manufacturers.  A few weeks later they got back to me, saying they had checked the facility and could find no trace.  Who knows what happened there?  However, they sent me some vouchers to spend on a few more of their soups in the future, which I thought was very kind of them.   But I gave the vouchers to my sister who isn't a coeliac!

Cristiana

 

 

[Scott Adams]

Chocolate can have a laxative and/or IBS effect in some people, so it’s still possible that your reaction is not due to gluten contamination. I’m not sure if it contains any artificial sweeteners, but some of these can also cause similar issues.

[Trish01]

On 8/15/2021 at 7:04 AM, cristiana said:

Hi Trish

I am in the UK and see these are for sale here, also marked gluten free (they look good!)  I have never tried them but I just wanted to say to you that occasionally certain products are recalled  because gluten sneaks in somehow.   It can be worth contacting the manufacturer with the batch number and point out that you are having issues and see what they say. 

I bought some ostensibly soup recently and had classic symptoms after eating it on two separate occasions.   It just had to be the soup, so I dropped a line to the manufacturers.  A few weeks later they got back to me, saying they had checked the facility and could find no trace.  Who knows what happened there?  However, they sent me some vouchers to spend on a few more of their soups in the future, which I thought was very kind of them.   But I gave the vouchers to my sister who isn't a coeliac!

Cristiana

 

 

Thanks Cristiana. I found this link…https://theparentvortex.com/wordpress/brookside-dark-chocolate-acai/ lots of people complaining that the candy was not gluten free, so I’m skeptical.  Those posts were years old though and the company has since changed the label to specify “gluten free”, so I was really hoping someone with coeliac would post that they eat them often with no problem.  My symptoms are also atypical.  I’ll get a little bloating sometime, but most of my symptoms are not GI. I get migraines, raynauds syndrome, fatigue and irritability, so sometimes I’m still unsure what triggered what.  I appreciate your suggestion though and will probably follow it next time I have an issue.  

[Trish01]

On 8/15/2021 at 2:01 PM, Scott Adams said:

Chocolate can have a laxative and/or IBS effect in some people, so it’s still possible that your reaction is not due to gluten contamination. I’m not sure if it contains any artificial sweeteners, but some of these can also cause similar issues.

Hi Scott. I appreciate your reply, but I don’t typically have problems with chocolate and also those typically aren’t the symptoms I get.   All of this is good info to know though.  

[cristiana]

1 hour ago, Trish01 said:

Thanks Cristiana. I found this link…https://theparentvortex.com/wordpress/brookside-dark-chocolate-acai/ lots of people complaining that the candy was not gluten free, so I’m skeptical.  Those posts were years old though and the company has since changed the label to specify “gluten free”, so I was really hoping someone with coeliac would post that they eat them often with no problem.  My symptoms are also atypical.  I’ll get a little bloating sometime, but most of my symptoms are not GI. I get migraines, raynauds syndrome, fatigue and irritability, so sometimes I’m still unsure what triggered what.  I appreciate your suggestion though and will probably follow it next time I have an issue.  

Hi Trish

It's so difficult isn't it with all these different reactions?  Regarding a completely different foodstuff, I had not been able to have pure oats for some years.  However, a few months back I ate some, I think from memory quite by mistake, and they didn't seem to cause any issues any more.  So I started to eat them - probably too many! Eventually I did get a sore stomach - but was it the oats, or something else? - so I stopped eating them.  Since then I've started to get muscle twitching and tingling in my face which was a classic gluten reaction I used to have when celiac disease really hit me seven years ago, and I  took such a long time to recover from.   I now don't know if it was the oats that is causing these issues, or something quite unrelated.

I find too that I cannot eat Green and Black's milk chocolate without having issues.  To be fair to the company, they make no claim about it being gluten free although some years ago I think the chocolate was in the Coeliac UK food guide as being safe.   But now it sets my gastric symptoms off - even though there is no mention of gluten on the label, not even the "may contain traces of gluten" warning.

[Scott Adams]

9 hours ago, Trish01 said:

Hi Scott. I appreciate your reply, but I don’t typically have problems with chocolate and also those typically aren’t the symptoms I get.   All of this is good info to know though.  

No worries, that came to mind because I recently ate a product from Costco call "Keto Krax" that are dark chocolate with almond. Sounds good right? I though I got some gluten contamination, but later realized that it contains an artificial sweetener, that is probably indigestible for many...at least it is for me, and it's called erythritol (ear-RITH-ri-tall):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythritol