Gluten-free food – on prescription – or just cheaper?

05/25/2012 By 7 Comments

On the basis that no publicity is bad publicity, last night’s Newsnight feature certainly raised the profile of coeliac disease and gluten free food and, in the ‘value for money’ area, the NHS came out a lot worse than the gluten-free food manufacturers. None the less, a very brief trawl through the  first dozen or so comments on the Newsnight site brought up around eight complaints about the cost of gluten-free food in the shops and four queries as to why coeliacs should get food on prescription at all – and especially why they should get cakes and Bourbon biscuits…

Setting aside the lamentable genius of the NHS for wasting money (which reduced Mrs Crimbles’ Jeremy Woods’ fellow guest to speechlessness – tricky in an interviewee…), gluten-free food does still remain significantly more expensive than ‘normal’ food. Although, historically, there are very good reasons for this (unusual, expensive and hard to obtain ingredients, no economies of scale, more difficult – and therefore expensive – manufacturing techniques, extra testing for allergens, poor distribution) as gluten-free/freefrom food becomes more mainstream these reasons become less and less valid. While a small premium (to cover extra testing and allergen control) may be acceptable prices of £2.50 for a loaf which in ‘normal’ format might cost £1 does, even taking all of the above into account, seem excessive.

The arguments over whether coeliacs should be entitled to get their food on prescription has been raging for several months – since these figure first came out. I blogged about it back in January (see here) and it has been widely covered elsewhere on the blogosphere. A number of NHS trusts are currently reveiwing their policy, and Coeliac UK are trying to deflect the flak by advising that only staple foods (bread, pasta etc), not treat foods (cakes, Bourbon biscuits), should be available on prescription. But while Jeremy Woods, quite reasonably, stayed on coeliac message last night and supported prescription food for coeliacs, maybe a better way to go would be to focus on getting the price of gluten-free food down to within striking distance of non-gluten-free food.

In a discussion last night, prompted by a call to say that Jeremy would be on Newsnight, FoodsMatter’s webmaster suggested that, instead of spending the money on prescription food for coeliacs, the government should spend it on helping gluten-free manufacturers to get the price of gluten-free food down. Unlikely though it is that this would come to pass, it makes some sense. And it certainly makes some sense for the burgeoning number of manufacturers of gluten-free foods to focus their attention on reducing their prices so as to capture the custom of those coeliacs whose loaf of bread currently costs the NHS (us) £32!

Filed Under: Allergies, Food, FreeFrom Food, Gluten-free, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

FreeFrom Food Seminar

09/25/2011 By Leave a Comment

Last week was seriously conference heavy with the Food and Drink Innovation Network‘s seminar on FreeFrom food on Thursday and an excellent conference on electrosensitivity organised by ES-UK (on which, more anon) on Saturday.

I was chairing the FDIN conference at which many of our close colleagues (and some sponsors of this year’s awards) were speakers, so I was particularly pleased that it was very well attended, and that the attendees appeared to find it so useful and enjoyable and that a number of them asked for the subject to be covered again very soon. The FDIN format devotes the morning to an overview of the subject matter of the conference (facts and figures/market research) and any technical stuff that needs to be covered (on this occasion, legislation/regulation for freefrom and the nutritional background) and the afternoon to case studies – all interspersed with ample opportunities for networking.

It was particularly interesting (and gratifying as far as I was concerned) that my overview of where freefrom was going, and could go, tallied almost exactly with the trends identified by Mintel‘s David Jago and by Julia Horlov of McCallum Layton who had done some very interesting qualitative research on people’s attitudes to freefrom and on the experiences of those who need to shop freefrom.

Right at the beginning of her presentation Julia highlit one of the most signficant changes which have occurred over the last five years. To her surprise, when her team went out in the street to talk to people about freefrom, they had absolutely no difficulty in finding people to talk to who either had personal experience of living and shopping freefrom, or who knew someone who had. Five years ago, when I chaired the first freefrom FDIN seminar, the market researchers really struggled to find interviewees and we were finally reduced to calling on volunteers from the subscribers to the Foods Matter magazine.

To, very briefly, cover the trends that we all identified – if you would like to delve more deeply, you can read my overview of the past and future of freefrom here – and all of the other presentations on the FDIN site.

• The freefrom sector is continuing to buck the recession, growing at between 8% and 10% per year.
• While around 10% of the population now buy freefrom because they need to, up to 40%of the population occasionally/regularly buy freefrom because they choose to.
• Although the number of those with a medical condition which requires them to eat ‘freefrom’ (coeliacs, allergics etc) is growing the real expansion in the market has come from those who ‘choose’ to eat freefrom as they perceive gluten-free and dairy-free foods to be healthier/better for them.
• That if the quality and variety of freefrom food and its availability continue to improve as they have done over the last few years, and if the price can be brought more into line with non-freefrom food, there is a good chance that freefrom food could become totally mainstream.
• That there is a huge opportunity for freefrom manufacturers in the catering/food service/restaurant trade. Outlets (restaurants, cafés, pubs, hotels etc) that can offer a good and safe freefrom meal will attract not only the allergic/freefrom customer but the three or four other people that they would be eating with.

The two other fact-finding presentations were from Mike Bromley of FreeFrom Food Awards sponsor, Genon Laboratories and from nutritionist Micki Rose who many will know from her contributions to the FoodsMatter sites.

Mike described the tryingly sparse amount of regulation covering freefrom, flagging up the desperate need of the industry for ‘thresholds’ – the amount of allergen which is going to cause an allergic person to react. As of now, the only allergen for which a ‘threshold’ has been set is gluten – the EU now follows the Codex Alimentarius guidance in setting 20 parts per million as the maximum amount of gluten that a food can contain in order to be called ‘gluten free’. But there is no guidance (because neither scientists nor medic.s have been able to discover what that level is) for milk, nuts, eggs, soy or any of the other major allergens. This makes life very difficult for manufacturers. Mike also described the testing processes and the complexities involved when the allergenicity of an allergen can be affected by whether it is raw or cooked, how it has been cooked and what it has been cooked or processed with….. For example, the allergenicity of nuts could be affected by the fattiness of chocolate and it appears that roasted peanuts may be more allergenic than boiled or raw peanuts.

Micki Rose then set manufacturers a high bar by describing the nourishing, healthy ingredients that she would like to see in freefrom foods (flax seeds, puréed or dried fruits and vegetables, mixed nuts and seeds, coconut and olive oil, arrowroot and potato starch, honey and agave syrup) that would help those who either needed or choose freefrom diets to regain or improve their health.

The afternoon’s freefrom case studies were enlighteningly diverse and gave the audience an excellent overview of how four very different companies had set about the business of making and selling freefrom food.

• Jeremy Woods, MD of Mrs Crimble’s (also a sponsor of this year’s FFFood Awards) described how Mrs Crimble’s freefrom cakes have, in less than ten years, come to be ranked as the UK’s second largest healthy bakery brand (after WeightWatchers) and in the top ten most popular cakes in the UK – based on the company’s core belief that the products they make should be delicious and wholesome, and just happen, also, to be gluten free.

• Joe Callery of Celtic Chocolates came from Dublin to describe how the conventional after dinner mints that he and his partner started to make in 1990 developed first into diabetic Easter eggs, then into dairy-free dark chocolate eggs, and then finally into his hugely successful dairy-free milk chocolate range (using rice syrups and starches to replace the dairy) which he now makes into bars and filled caramels for all the major supermarkets as well as for his own brand, Choices.

• Charlotte Pike of GoFreeFoods (winner of the brownie category in last year’s FreeFrom Food Awards) described how she and her boyfriend (who suffers from a number of food intolerances) started GoFreeFoods while she was still working full time as an investment analyst and he as a systems designer. Only full time on GoFreeFoods for the last six months, it has been a hard slog and involved many more late nights and far more red tape than she could ever have anticipated – but it is going well and they are now ready to develop new products and move on to stage two…

• Finally, Lesley Cutts of GoodnessDirect, the very first and still by far the largest on-line retailer of freefrom foods, described how Goodness Foods came to be involved in freefrom food and how they now help to develop brands and give the smaller, specialist manufacturers access to a wider market.

A fascinating day – and thank you to FDIN for setting up the seminar.

Filed Under: FreeFrom Food Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

FreeFrom Food Awards 2011 Really Kick Off!

10/31/2010 By Leave a Comment

It has been very busy in the Foodsmatter office this week  as today is the cut off date for the discounted early entry to this year’s FreeFrom Food Awards – so the end of the week saw a mad rush of entries all trying to squeeze in before the deadline and get their 10% off! (Those who missed the discount deadline can now relax as the final deadline for entry is not until the middle of December!)

It is all very exciting for us as quite apart from those freefrom companies whose products we would expect to see, we have had a whole batch of entries from freefrom companies we had never heard of – several from outside the UK. And we thought we knew everyone operating in the field!

It is also very exciting because tomorrow we are not only ‘officially’ launching the 2011 awards, but we are revealing this year’s main sponsor. And  because my blog readers are a specially privileged group, you are getting the advance information  – the main sponsors for the 2011 FreeFrom Food Awards are Juvela, long established manufacturers of prescription foods for coeliacs.

For followers of freefrom this is a particularly interesting move. Up till now Juvela have been hard core manufacturers of staple products for diagnosed  coeliacs (breads and rolls, flour mixes, pasta and pizza bases, biscuits and crackers)  available only on prescription. But the forward planners at Juvela felt the wind of change blowing their way. They realised that with the extraordinary expansion in the freefrom market, their core customers are now looking beyond their prescription products to the enormous range of gluten-free products available everywhere from their local health food shop to their nearest superstore – and are prepared to pay for interesting and unusual g-f products which will never be available on prescription.

So Juvela are moving out into the wider freefrom world. They have opened an on-line shop which is quite separate from their prescription business, they have just launched their first four non-prescription, free from products – four breakfast cereals – and they have decided to hit the freefrom ground running by sponsoring the  2011 FreeFromFood Awards! Since we pride ourselves as being the first to encourage of innovation in this sector, we are delighted!!

In fact we are totally delighted by the support we have had from all of the freefrom industry for this year’s awards as we currently have  15 out of a total of 17 categories sponsored and our sponsor list reads like a Who’s Who of the freefrom industry:
Livwell (the Innovation category), Tesco (3 categories), Asda (2 categories), Delamere Dairy, Food and Drink Innovation Network, Genius Gluten Free, Genon Laboratories,  Goodnessdirect, Lactofree, Mrs Crimbles, Produced in Italy, Swedish Glacé…  Roll on the judging session in February and the awards presentation (by Antony Worrall Thompson) and party in April!!

Meanwhile, whether it is the whiff of awards in the air or what, but we seem to have been inundated with excitingly delicious new products!  Chocolate galore: definitely innovative and very interesting dark chocolate with smoked sea salt from Seed and Bean, a really excellent range of dairy free milk chocolate bars, caramels and filled chocolates from Celtic Chocolates for which we are still awaiting prices and availability and, arrived only yesterday, GoDo Italian chocolate. So far we have only tried the dairy-free Expresso but, with crunched up with of coffee beans running through it, it is to die for….

More chocolate, but made into a butter with Brazil nuts (yummy) from Raw Health, a chocolate oat drink from Oatly, and, earlier in the month, smooth and delicious dairy free chocolate fudge from Mooove Over Dairy and mega-gooey-rich chocolate brownies from Blue Basil.

And, just in case you are worrying, with some reason, that none of us are able to fit into our jeans any more….. We have also been tasting rather less indulgent but still excellent new fresh gluten-free breads from Glutafin, gluten-free sandwich wraps (including quinoa and flax seeds…) from Celia’s Kitchen, mini rice cakes from Kallo and, arrived only yesterday and not yet tasted, frozen gluten-free savoury pies and pastries from Gluten Freedom….

Whew – I think I need a cup of coffee!

Filed Under: Dairy-free, Food, FreeFrom Food, Gluten-free Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,