Gluten Free and The Big Three

A couple of days ago, there was a letter to the editor in our local newspaper from a visitor from Michigan. He remarked that he saw many bumper stickers advising him to “buy local,” and he wanted to understand “just how locally and to what products the fine people of the Northeast extend this philosophy to their purchasing practices.” In particular, he was referring to the preponderance of non-American cars, and he urged Vermonters to take a look at American cars and commented that the big three have made great strides in the last few years.

It was a thought-provoking letter. Six years ago, we turned in a gas-guzzling American SUV with 75,000 miles for a Prius. With 160,000+ miles on the odometer and still going strong, we have no intention of buying a new car any time soon. When we bought our Prius, not only were there few fuel-efficient American vehicles, but the existing SUV’s didn’t hold up well as all-season vehicles on the back roads of Vermont.

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably wondering what domestic versus foreign automobiles has to do with gluten free bread. Well, just by chance, I happened to be driving from Vermont to Michigan about six weeks ago for a gluten free vendor fair. I took a route through Canada and crossed into Michigan at the Port Huron border crossing. It was approximating rush hour, and I was stunned that there were no foreign cars on the road. Actually, I made a game of it and counted only seven foreign cars in my one and one-half hour trip from the border to Ann Arbor. It was as if I were in a foreign country (or Vermont is a foreign country!)—I saw models of American cars I’ve never seen before, and the highways were miracles of efficiency.

When I visited a few local health food stores, though, the frozen cases were stuffed with imported bread products and pizzas. While the buy local/buy American sentiment in the Detroit area was obvious for automobiles, local and American gluten free bread products weren’t to be found. A few years back, imported gluten free brands were some of the most palatable (and often the most economical) on the market, but just like in Detroit, a lot has changed in the past few years. There are a number of domestic gluten free bread products that are tastier and a lot more wholesome. So, it occurs to me that the Big Three and domestic gluten free bread manufacturers have a lot more in common than they might think. As a manufacturer, we are in a position of having to dislodge imported brands from the freezer shelves. We do this by letting as many people as possible taste our breads—21,000 celiacs last year alone. Once customers see and taste the difference, they can make a difference by buying a non-industrialized food product made by an American company who cares about not only its customers, but its employees, and the family farms and small businesses that supply its raw materials. And by the time our Prius finally gives up the ghost, I'm hopeful that the Big Three will have demonstrated to me the superiority of their automobiles.

This is Phood

The other day I was minding my own business (read: working the phones, calling stores about getting them to carry our products), when a salesman for an ingredient company showed up and wanted to talk to me about buying from his company. Among other things, we buy a lot of tapioca, literally a truckload of it at a time. We also buy large quantities of expeller-pressed, non-GMO canola oil and all natural mozzarella cheese. Word gets around. Sales people are often soliciting our business.

This guy starts his pitch and of course wants to know from whom we currently buy our ingredients and how much we pay. All good and fine. He then whips out his glossy sales literature to show me the kinds of stuff he can sell me. I start looking through the five-page catalog while he peppers me with questions. Do we use any dough conditioners? Or binding agents? Stabilizers? Nope, nope, and nope. The more I read, the more amazed I become. Just the categories of substances were unbelievable: acidulants, excipients, humectants, phosphates, to list a few. Yummy things like benzoic acid, propylene glycol, and calcium sulfate. We see these ingredients in processed foods all the time, and every now and then I have wondered where do you get stuff like this? Now I know.

I began to really joke around with the guy. “Man,” I say, this is like I am reading something from Dow Chemical. You really expect me to put this stuff in our bread?” In fact, his company is mostly a chemical company, except that this is stuff you can legally put in food. “Look at this, what’s a ‘humectant?’” One of our staff folks, Ruth, is sitting at a desk across the room, overhears this and pipes up,”Oh, I know what that is, it’s in my hair conditioner!” Oh boy.

I couldn’t help imagining how this stuff must be packaged. In big metal drums, like chlorine for swimming pools? Or in heavy-duty plastic bags like you find lawn fertilizer and weed killer? Or perhaps thick plastic bottles for detergents and the stuff that unclogs your drains or cleans your toilets? I won’t be finding out. We don’t touch this stuff. And I have to keep reminding myself: This is food, this is food, this is food. No, wait! No, it’s not. It’s Phood! PHOOD!!!

Say “no” to industrialized phood.

Don't Eat Anything Your Great-grandmother Wouldn't Recognize as Food

I’ve always been a health-conscious person, mostly from the perspective of eating a balanced diet and getting plenty of exercise. But it wasn’t until our family of four had to begin eating gluten free almost six years ago that I became a compulsive label reader. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stood in the grocery store, reading a label, and had someone come up and say “you don’t want to know what’s in there!” Actually, it happened only several days ago, when my son needed to buy some beef jerky for a college event, and I was looking for a gluten free variety. The guy was right; I did not want to know what was in the jerky. I also needed to have a Blackberry with me to look up half the ingredients on Wikipedia to truly understand what was in it.

On the plus side of eating gluten free (and, yes, there are some plusses,) we eat far less processed food than we once did. I make almost all of our meals from fresh ingredients these days, including our baked goods and snack items. One would think with all the improvements in gluten free products and the sheer number of them, this would not be the case. But as the gluten free marketplace has grown, so have the additives in gluten free foods. There are additives to extend shelf life, additives to retard mold growth, flavor enhancers, and all kinds of engineered compounds that act as dough conditioners, binders, and texture-enhancers. Makes me wish I had paid better attention in high school chemistry class. As a wholesale baker, we are bombarded with all kinds of ingredients manufacturers peddling their wares. Perhaps the scariest of all are the chemically modified food starches—tapioca, potato, corn and rice.

Cultured dextrose, glucono-delta-lactone, sodium alginate, modified cellulose, monocalcium phosphate, ascorbic acid, sodium carboxy methylcellulose, sodium stearayl lactylate, microbial enzyme, poly dextrose, mono and diglycerides, tapioca dextrin, methyl-cellulose, and agar-agar. These are some of the additives commonly found in gluten free food. Why? Some will argue that they improve taste, others texture, and shelf life. But, gluten free food doesn’t need these additives to be great tasting. In the words of Michael Pollan, "...There's a lot of money in the Western diet. The more you process any food, the more profitable it becomes.”

At Against The Grain, we subscribe to another piece of Michael Pollan’s advice:"Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food."