Missing Certain Foods

[glen4cindy]

Hello again. I am a newbie that has been gone for awhile. Just been really busy.

I have a question that I was curious about. I have found that being gluten free has made dining our rather difficult. Most places that I go, they are very concerned, and bring out a chef, or a person in charge who will check ingredient lists for me. One thing that comes up is this. Has anyone contacted restaurants and asked them to develop gluten free alternative items? When my wife cooks for me at home, she makes alot of the same things that she used to make, but, now uses Almond Flour, White/Brown Rice Flour, etc.

Is it possible that some of the nicer restaurants would be willing to provide gluten free alternatives to order? I really like the Southwest Shrimp and the Firecracker Chicken Wraps for instance from Longhorn Steakhouse, but, they are not gluten-free and I cannot consume them.

Just wondering if anyone tried contacting them. Many places are now offering Atkins items. Would be really nice to see gluten-free items.

[Guest PastorDave]

Pastor Dave's wife here,

In the United States there are not many restaraunts that specificaly cater to people on a gluten-free diet, but it is not so throughout the world. In Italy many of the restaraunts will even serve gluten-free pasta! It is just so underdiagnosed in the Western hemisphere that the restaraunts have not had the chance to see how much of the population would benefit from gluten-free meals. Once the diagnosis keeps up with the incidence of celiac disease, then the number affected will be a very strong motivation for change in restaraunts and in food manufacturing.

[celiac3270]

Tiny86 meant to say this, but used the report button, rather than the add topic button to "post" it. Therefore, it came in the form of a report to the moderators, but it was meant to go here:

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I have eaten at redlobster 2 times, and they have been great. So far all I have been able to get is the Lobster & Shrimp Ceasar salad. I am also a nebie learning, boy is this hard.

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[Sharon C.]

I actually thought about contacting some manufacturers to see if they were interested in closing down their equipment, washing it down, producing a certain amount of the same product but gluten free and releasing it to the public, then going back to their regular stuff and supporting a gluten free line of mainstream stuff. Maybe have a schedule to produce some gluten-free stuff here and there. It may not be worth it for them to invest in a gluten-free line, so maybe just producing it once every few months would be able to show them that the products would sell and they would not lose money.

[FreyaUSA]

When you buy a product that says it's been manufactured on equipment also used in the manufacturing of < >, they have done essentially that. Companies like Kraft will list all known allergens in their ingredient label, but still warn you that the chance of cross contamination is there (even if very minimal. Cleaning processes for food grade manufacturing are pretty strict and many companies are even stricter.) This is where people have to decide if it's worth the risk or not in eating that product.