The Kitchen

Some of our gluten-sensitive customers have asked about the "No Gluten Ingredients" statement on our brownie and cinnamon cake webpages. Given that both those products have wheat starch, how can it be gluten free?

Wheat flour has two major parts: starch and protein (mostly gluten). It's possible to separate these two components, and both wheat starch and wheat gluten are available as separate ingredients. The separation process is very good, typically reducing the protein content down to 200 parts per million. Our cakes use just the wheat starch (after modifying it to turn it into a fiber source), not the gluten, and the low gluten content is further diluted by the other ingredients to below 100 ppm. Consequently, these cakes have effectively no gluten, although they are made with wheat (starch) ingredients.

We would have actually gone for a "Gluten Free" claim on the packaging, but the facility the cakes are made in was not certified as such, presenting possible legal issues with that, especially as the FDA has yet to issue any regulatory guidance on the term (though they've been promising one for ages). But for most people the gluten level (at less than 100 ppm) should be fine.

In case you're curious, the magic number is "2". That's how many times I have to hear the question before it becomes a blog post.