Gluten Free Raleigh Dispatch: 2-17-2010

• New research will be funded by the US Government to develop "wheat varieties with reduced Celiac Disease-causing proteins" - basically Gluten Free Wheat.  That's a novel idea but kinda hard to imagine.  Arcadia Biosciences, Inc and Washington State University will use the $855,500 grant to conduct the research over the next 2 years.  The Savvy Celiac blog has a great write up here.  Somehow this seems like a good idea in concept but may be hard to put into place in the real world.  Will there be GF wheat and normal wheat products?  Will we have to read the label with even more confusion?  What about barley and rye?  Hmm...
• Quick update for Asheville, NC and the Posana Cafe... There has been a lot of reviews done about this Gluten Free restaurant so I just wanted to spread the word.  Another excellent review from the Celiac Chicks blog from New York City.  Here is another article from Celiac-Disease.com.  Can't wait to check this place out on my next visit to Asheville.
• Check out a blog post from Custom Choice Cereal where they detail their use of Gluten Free cleaning supplies from Mrs. Meyer's Household Cleaners.  This company takes Gluten Free seriously, right down to the products they use to clean their facility and hands!
• Celiac.com had an article about Five Simple Questions to Determine if Your Child Might be Celiac which details recent research from a Danish study.  The Savvy Celiac offers her take here.
• Check out Gluten Free Durham's update on Gluten Free Week @ Camp Kanata here.  With your help, Gluten Free Raleigh has raised nearly $1,200 for this camp.  You can also check out Nancy Lapid's About.com Celiac Disease page for her summary of a recent study that shows summer camps really benefit kids with Celiac.
• Gluten Free Greenie highlights the disappointing GF options during her recent visit to Duke Raleigh Hospital here.  Yikes!  We gotta do something about this!
• Starbucks Gluten Free options expand.  Check out the following from Triumph Gluten Free here as well as another write up from Celiac-Disease.com here.  Dr. Lucy's cookies are now available.  I've picked up the 3 varieties shown below at the Starbucks on Falls of Neuse (next door to ZPizza) and thought they were pretty good.  Triumph also reviewed these cookies here.

 

• Twin Cakes Bakery's latest newsletter says the following about their new Gluten Product Testing Policy...Product testing: We are in the process of randomly checking our products for gluten. We so far we have tested three products and all have come back negative! We will continue to product test all of our products to ensure quality and safety. (We are using the EZ Gluten testing)".  This is great news!  I highly encourage all companies that make Gluten Free products to test their products (or obtain an independent certification like GIG's GFCO) if they are not already doing so.  I also highly encourage you as the GF consumer to support those companies going the extra mile (and expense) to prove to you that their products are safe.
• Saw the following in the February 7th, 2010 bulletin (see page 7) from Sacred Heart Cathedral (Downtown Raleigh Catholic Church) about offering low gluten host for communion - "the Cathedral will make available the low gluten hosts for our gluten-intolerant parishioners." Just as an FYI, tests performed on these low gluten hosts have come back at 100 PPM.
• Triumph Dining helps spread the word about the NC Dept. of Agriculture case versus Great Specialty Products and provides the FDA's phone number for you to call and tell them about it.  They should know that their lack of action is leading to this fraudulent type of behavior.  More to come on this case next week.
• Chatham Street Cafe in Cary gets reviewed by the News & Observer.  The review includes the mention that the restaurant has some Gluten Free items.