The secret of finding food for the gluten intolerant at a bargain price is to move outside the “diet shelves” to products a larger audience and therefore have more sales and therefore have a lower price. Nabisco’s Cream of Rice cereal is an obvious example. I could make other recommendations but this information might be obsolete by the time you get to your supermarket.

Read every ingredients list every time. “Defensive Shopping” is the celiac’s best strategy. Read all the ingredients, not just the title on the box. For example: Kellogg’s Rice Krispies should be gluten free. Wrong! The ingredient listed second is barley flour. (By the way, some generic brands taste exactly like Kellogg’s Rice Krispies, but are gluten free.) In order, you will need a reliable guide book. I recommend Gluten-Free Product Guide published by the Celiac Sprue Association. The first section  lists products by brand name and gives the date on which the information was collected, The guide is republished every year. In my opinion, any entry more than one year is highly-suspect.

The fifth section lists individual ingredients that might appear on the ingredients lists that you may read. For me, this is the most important section of the book. You may need to prepare a “cheat sheet”. For example, I can never remember that maltodextrin, maltol, manoic, and mannitol are wonderful but that Maltol is gluten-toxic. Carry the book with you (or at least have it available in your car), the information can be invaluable.

Published 5/7/06  Updated 9/14/10