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Celiac.com 03/30/2020 - Panic buying ahead of shelter in place orders for the coronavirus pandemic are taking a toll on people with celiac disease and food allergies, who are finding shelves empty, leaving them with few or no grocery alternatives. Gluten-free, allergen-free, and other special diet foods had not been spared from the carnage, with many celiacs claiming that purchasers of these foods often do not have any food allergies. Empty Gluten-Free Shelves in UK Gluten-free shoppers in the UK, looking for their regular staples, are faced with more and more bare shelves. One UK mom, Debbie Carey from Nuneaton, has been unable to find gluten free pasta for her teenage daughter with celiac disease. Carey says she's been to every store she can find, but none of them have any gluten free pasta...I have been looking for over a week," she said. "The country has gone mad, people are just grabbing what they can not really realizing what they are taking, it is selfish, this is a life-threatening condition, I only have enough pasta left for one more meal now." Gluten-Free Food for Celiacs Only One UK charity, Allergy UK, is urging people to refrain from buying free-from foods, such as gluten-free, unless they have a genuine food sensitivity. With alternative products oat milk and gluten-free bread disappearing from store shelves, Allergy UK is calling on shoppers to be leave these products for people with food allergies. With one in five in the UK suffering from at least one food allergy, purchases of specialty free-from foods by non-sensitive people can shortchange those with special diet needs. That means leaving gluten-free products for people with celiac disease or other medical sensitivities to wheat. Experts Urge Restraint for Non-Celiacs In Australia, Associate Professor Jason Tye-Din, the Head of the Celiac Research Laboratory at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, said that numerous worried patients and parents had expressed concerns over the impact of panic-buying on the availability of gluten-free food. "Many have said that the shelves in the gluten-free section are completely empty," said Professor Tye-Din, who also reminded the public that a gluten-free diet is the only medical treatment for people with celiac disease. Gluten is harmful to people with celiac disease, and negatively affects their health. Tye-Din reminds us that people with celiac disease "can suffer symptoms similar to acute food poisoning, but there are also troubling long-term effects like osteoporosis, infertility, liver disease and even some forms of cancer, such as lymphoma." Like many health professionals who treat people with celiac disease, Professor Tye-Din reminds the public to be sensitive to the needs of people with celiac disease and other food allergies. Order Gluten-Free Food Delivery During Covid-19 Glutenfreemall.com Follow COVID-19 on Celiac and Gluten-Free Forum See what people are saying about gluten-free food product shortage during the COVID-19 outbreak in our forum. Have a story about bare shelves and scarce gluten-free products? Share it below in our comment section.

Celiac.com 02/07/2019 - A number of companies have rolled out online grocery delivery services recently. Such services are growing in popularity every day. But are they helpful for gluten-free grocery shopping? Being able to check products and labels can be crucial to effective gluten-free shopping. So, how helpful are grocery delivery services for gluten-free shopping? Can you really have your groceries delivered and be confident that they get the gluten-free part right? We’ve scouted the major grocery delivery services to find out. Here's what we found. Grocery Delivery Services: Safeway Safeway.com delivers groceries in some areas. They handle their own deliveries, so check the Safeway website for delivery information in your area. A search of Safeway’s shopping website for the term “gluten-free” turns up nearly 5000 products. Each product listing includes a picture and links for nutritional information, including potential allergens. Farmstead In San Francisco Bay Area, Farmstead.com delivers fresh, local groceries in your neighborhood, saving you time, money and stress. Target Target features grocery delivery by a company called Shipt. Type the term “gluten-free” into the search window to find numerous gluten-free products, including granola bars, bread and muffins. Shipt offers a helpful feature that allows shoppers to manage their selections in the virtual cart before placing their final order. Shipt Shipt.com partners with various grocers nationwide to offer grocery delivery services. Type the term “gluten-free” into the search window to find numerous gluten-free products, including granola bars, bread and muffins. Instacart Instacart.com partners with a variety of major grocery outlets in regions nationwide. Check by zip code to find options ranging from grocery stores and pharmacies to pet stores. In Los Angeles, Instacart partners with Aldi, Kroger, Ralph’s, Von’s and Albertson’s, among others. Check the main company website for delivery options near you. The Gluten-Free Mall GlutenFreeMall.com offers online shopping, and nationwide delivery services for hundreds of favorite, name brand gluten-free products. Overall, grocery delivery services can offer tremendous convenience, and ease of shopping. Nutrition and ingredient labels are shown on each product page. Be careful to check nutrition labels. Otherwise, some pros and cons include: PROS: Convenience Ease of shopping Ease of managing cart and paying Delivery CONS: Nutrition information can be hard to find. Double check the return policy of any service you choose. Tip: If you’re not sure of certain items, order products that you are confident are gluten-free, such as dairy, fruit, vegetables, meat, etc., and try adding Have you tried a grocery delivery service? If so, how was your experience? Let us know in the comment section.

Celiac.com 12/25/2018 - Recently, a bit of a dustup kicked off in New Zealand, literally, over what celiac shoppers see as the placement of gluten-free flours beside or beneath standard wheat flours that are not gluten-free. The news website Newshub recently ran a photo of shelves at Ponsonby Countdown that showed gluten-free flour beside the regular flour. "That's bad, because flour puffs everywhere, contaminating everything near it," one shopper told Newshub, asking to remain anonymous. A Countdown spokesperson told Newshub on Tuesday the store will be reviewing the placement of gluten-free flour. In all fairness, with store shelf space a scarce commodity, stores have a tough job. In general, customers overwhelmingly like similar products placed close together. So, the thinking goes, gluten-free flour and standard flour are both flour, so they belong together on the shelf. Of course, for people with celiac disease, the two products are distinct, and most celiac want the products separated for safety reason. "However,” said the Countdown spokeswoman, “we completely understand how the placement of gluten-free flour next to plain flour may concern some customers and we'll review this." It sounds like the company will be listening to their gluten-free shoppers and looking to find a way to place their gluten-free flour safely for people with celiac disease. Stay tuned to see how the story resolves. Read more at: Newshub.co.nz

Celiac.com 11/17/2015 - For most people, when they think of gluten, the first thing that comes to mind is bread. And for most people with celiac or a gluten sensitivity, that is what we miss most. While people with celiac or gluten sensitivity may never be able to experience the wide selection or soft texture that "glutenous" bread offers, there are still some tasty gluten-free bread options available at most grocery stores. In order to find the best gluten-free bread options, I went to my local Giant Eagle and tried all of the gluten-free bread available and explored four main aspects: taste, texture, price, and variety. The three brands of gluten-free bread offered at Giant Eagle were Schar, Udi's, and Goodbye Gluten. In the variety category, Udi's offered the largest selection of bread with the choice of white bread, multigrain bread, cinnamon raisin bread, and millet-chia bread and omega flax and fiber bread. Udi's also offers a large variety of other products ranging from muffins and cookies, to pizza crusts and tortillas. While Udi's may have the largest variety of the three brands, Schar offered a few different kinds of bread as well, with a cinnamon raisin and multigrain option along with an assortment of rolls. In the category of price, Goodbye Gluten came in as the most inexpensive per ounce at $0.27 per ounce. Udi's was in the middle $0.37 per oz. and Schar was the most expensive of the three, coming in at $0.40 per oz. Now let's get down to business. Taste and texture—the two aspects that are hardest to get right when making gluten-free bread. In my opinion, Udi's won both categories with the tastiness, most normal textured bread. My only critique was the slices of bread weren't big enough! All three brands seemed to have their slices of bread on the smaller side, but Udi's bread seemed to be especially small. Although Udi's took the first prize in three of the four categories, that is not to say the other two brands were not good. I was impressed with all three brands, but my main critique covers the texture category. The Goodbye Gluten bread seemed to be very dense, and while most gluten-free bread crumbles more than normal, I felt that the Goodbye Gluten loaf broke easier than the other two. However, it was very moist, something that is hard to come by in gluten-free bread. With the Schar bread, I felt that it was a little dry and grainy rather than moist and chewy like normal gluten filled bread. However, I found that when I toasted the bread, it had a texture more consistent with normal toast. Overall, I was satisfied with all three brands, but Udi's was the favorite. With the texture and taste being spot on, I did not need much else to convince me, but the added bonus of the reasonable price and large variety made it the most desirable gluten-free bread available.