Event: Healthy Baking Seminar and Natural Products Expo

BMT Weiser attended the Healthy Baking Seminar and Natural Products Expo East. The GF world is becoming clearer to us. Good taste is critical today for success in the market -- and customers are tiring of the awful texture they have generally been asked to accept. Innovative bakers are determined to develop items that have cross-over appeal.

There were several interesting presentations:

Jules Shepard gave a very convincing and informative talk. Especially interesting for us to discover was that lactose intolerance is the big problem that Celiacs face. Jules believes over 60% of Celiacs have lactose intolerance as well. Over time, as they get Gluten out of their diet, some are able to go back to lactose. Jules is convinced that taste must be fun, and she definitely convinced us! She stressed the importance of getting GF certification. Jules believes in Clean Labels (but did not define what this means) and is moving away (but only somewhat) from Agave. Her new book "Free For All Cooking" provides strategies for substituting GF ingredients into people's traditional favorite recipes.

Melinda Dennis suggested that damage from eating gluten (often before people know that they have a gluten problem or even full-out Celiac Disease) causes damage to the Villi, causing lactose intolerance. GF diets often cost consumers 30% more than a standard gluten diet In 2008 there was talk in the US of establishing a gluten tolerance of 20 PPM -- so a food would have to test below 20 PPM to qualify as GF. This has yet to pass, but is the de facto standard and the participants largely believed it is a good standard. One person offered up that their company has established 10 PPM as their cutoff.

People on GF diet are missing iron fortification and other forms of fortification -- so Melinda’s answer is that GF products ought to be fortified -- which is just starting to happen. Due to all the rice, corn and potato products in the GF diet, 60% are overweight. (It should be noted that 67% of the general US population is overweight, so the former statistic should be understood with that in mind.) According to Melinda, 36% of people on GF diets still get exposed to gluten in one form or another.

Holly Beach of SillyYak (GF Certified) moved her baking from Minneapolis (near the Mayo Clinic) to Madison, WI in 2005. Here she can bake with Ancient Grains and other fibrous, colorful and interesting items, while in MN she struggled to gain consumer acceptance for such items. Having said this, the demand for GF in MN going back to 2002 is what drove her to set aside 50% of her physical space for GF baking. In MN when she first started the tricks she used to bake GF one day per week was to do a complete wash-down, have dedicated utensils and equipment and to shut all air handlers off during GF baking. Now, in Madison, she has separate air handlers and is GF certified. Holly has GFCO certification (Division of GIG -- Gluten Intolerance Group), but it seems there is one other recognized certification as well (CSA-USA) . She now bakes a GF line that is egg free, casein free and of course GF. She also bakes with gluten. As there are no preservatives in her GF items, she freezes whatever does not sell fresh. Holly refers to the interesting grains and ancient grains as "protein grains".

Write Up on go-with-your-gut.com

Ilise Ratner featured our booth at the Suffolk County Celiacs Fair on her blog:

"BMT Weiser is pleased to formally introduce their line of Nutrient-Dense Gluten-Free baking ingredients and to feature their San Joaquin Valley Concentrates’ Grape Seed Flour (GSF) in an Oat Bar from Sweetie Jo’s. The educated and motivated consumers visiting their booth fully recognized that gluten intolerance means their bodies are inefficient at absorbing nutrients. Some were there to search for everything from weight loss to getting enough calcium for young children, the elderly, and everything in between. New contacts and future friends left with bags of Grape Seed Flour to bake with in their homes or GF commercial kitchens. Please visit their Blog, bmtgf.blogspot.com"

Thanks Ilise!

Video: Suffolk County Celiacs Fair

Photos: Suffolk County Celiac Group Vendor Fair

The Sweetie Jo's and BMT Weiser team at the conference.

Event: Suffolk County Celiacs Vendor Fair

Thanks to everyone who came by our booth on Saturday and Sunday! We will be posting photos and video from the fair soon!

New Flyer

Article: Markets help deliver fresh, gluten-free foods

"Chelsea Clinton's recent wedding was a big affair, but neither the number of attendants she chose nor her new husband's gift to the bride caught the attention of those who suffer painful effects of eating gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye, barley and oat products.

It was the wedding cake.

Supposedly chocolate and gluten-free, it grabbed headlines for these people. It complied with Chelsea's intolerance of the ingredient, which usually attacks the digestive process."

Read the entire in article in Suburban Journals.