"Gluten free" news and stories

Gluten-free product family. Photo: Betty Crocker

The gluten-free community has been in the limelight in recent months, and now they have a new celebrity of sorts backing them.

Betty Crocker now offers a line of gluten-free classic dessert mixes -- Gluten Free Yellow Cake Mix, Gluten Free Devil's Food Cake Mix, Gluten Free Brownie Mix and Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix.

Among the ingredients in the mix is rice flour, a grain allowed on a gluten-free diet.

While the price point is a little higher than the normal cake mixes (the retail price is usually around $4.49), it saves a trip to the health-food store for your next gluten-free brownie craving. Plus, other comparable gluten-free mixes usually run a price point of $6 and up.

"There was always a premium paid for a product that was considered gluten-free," Elaine Monarch, executive director of the Celiac Disease Foundation, tells Slashfood. "Now that General Mills has brought that into the mainstream for a much lower price, it's fabulous."

The Betty Crocker Baking Team says they came up with the mixes after witnessing firsthand through two staff members how the disease can affect day-to-day living.

While I love bread, and feel so lucky to be pretty much allergy free, I know it can be tough on those who do have a serious food allergy. I once had a friend with coeliac disease. I remember how careful she had to be with what she ate and all the questions she asked at restaurants before ordering. I made a gluten free cake for her, but now I can't remember what kind of flour I used (of course).

It shouldn't be too hard for my friend to find good gluten free goodies now, though. According to the Orlando Sentinel there's such a demand now that it would be foolish for producers to ignore it. Apparently most health experts thought of coeliac as a European disease, but after a 2003 study by the University of Maryland which found that 1 in 133 Americans suffered from it coeliac disease jumped into the spotlight.

It used to be that there were only a few products at health food stores, but now you can find gluten free products anywhere.

Love, loss, adventure and blueberry pie? Those are all themes that run throughout the new movie My Blueberry Nights, which opens nationwide today. The movie stars singer Norah Jones, in her debut acting role. She crisscrossing the country in an attempt to find herself and in the process, frequents classic diners and eats a lot of pie. Blueberry pie to be exact.

The famous vegan, gluten-free and refined sugar-free New York City bakery, Babycakes NYC supplied all the pies used on the set of the film. They've offered us a rough "recipe" (it's actually a list of ingredients, but I'm sure the intrepid bakers among you might be able to craft it into a pie) for the blueberry pie that Norah Jones is about to take a bite of in the picture above.

Check out the film and, if any of you make this pie, let us know!

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Friends, we're bringing all kinds of snacks, foods, and desserts to the table for Super Bowl, but let's be real about something. Most of these foods are meaty, carb-y, and definitely go against every New Year's Resolution you made a month ago. Steak chili? Sour cream based dips? Potato chips? Deep-fried everything? Yeah!

But, well, yeah.

Though the Super Bowl may be but one day, and not even an entire day, but an afternoon, some of us do want to stick with healthy options, or have some dietary restrictions, like reader hayduke who left us a comment today asking for suggestions for Super Bowl food ideas with the following guiding principles (we don't like to call them "restrictions"):

• Sister is vegetarian
• Sister also eats gluten-free
• Dad needs to lose 20 pounds, so something "light"

Hayduke has a few things already lined up, but would like some more ideas (as would we!) If you have recipes or ideas to share, leave them in the comments!

Back when I was in high school, I discovered that you could get maple sweetened candy canes in the health food section of Fred Meyer (a west coast chain of stores that sell groceries, clothes, homewares and just about everything else. I've lived on the east coast for six years and I still miss it). I bought them instead of the traditional ones because I liked the old-fashioned color the maple gave the candy. I also liked the idea of eating something that wasn't filled with lots of artificial colors.

Now there's another way to get candy canes that make you feel incrementally better about eating them. According to our friends over at Green Daily, you can now get organic, vegan, fair trade, GMO-free candy canes. They are made by a company called Pure Fun. They use all natural, kosher, vegan, gluten-free and Fair Trade ingredients and they source their cane sugar from companies that "green cut" it by hand. You can find Pure Fun candy at Whole Foods or online.

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