Helping A Friend With Celiac's - Glutenguard

[NickZ]

Hi all! I have a close friend that was diagnosed with Celiacs about a year ago, right around her 30th birthday. She doesn't get a lot of support with the exception of her parents and husband. I'm doing my best to be a good friend and trying to help her cope with her disease. She's really depressed about not being able to eat the foods that she's been eating for 30 years, and is also bummed out about having to call 1-800 numbers for every product that she picks out at the grocery store. She's not a very technical person, but I am so I am trying to set her up with GlutenGuard on her Palm Pilot. This seems like a good solution to the grocery store woes. I was wondering if anyone here uses the program and would share your experience with it. Additionally, a barcode scanner seems like a great, easy way to scan in items and find out about their gluten content. I've done some digging and most scanners are VERY expensive. I was hoping someone might have a resource or suggestion on where I can find a reasonably priced barcode scanner for a Palm (Sont Clie, actually).

I'm going to continue to read the forums here, you all are so nice and helpful and I'm certain that I can find good suggestions for my friend. She is not so good about using the internet, and as much as we try to help her, she doesn't catch on.

Thanks all!

Nick

[emcmaster]

Nick, you sound like a wonderful friend.

I was very excited about GlutenGuard when I got it. I still use it when I need to buy a product, like a can of black beans, and need to find a couple brands that are guaranteed gluten-free. I just search for "black beans" and scroll down the list till I find a couple brands that are gluten-free.

For that purpose, it's very helpful.

But searching for a specific brand is hit-or-miss. Often, it will come up marked "yellow" which means that it may have gluten. They consider anything that has an unexplained ingredient, such as starch, to be yellow. So anything that comes up coded yellow may be completely safe or may have gluten - you have to figure that out on your own.

If it wasn't for what seems to be an unproportionate amount of foods that come up yellow, I'd be pretty happy with it.

Instead of using it now, most of the time I do a web search. I go to google and enter in: JIF peanut butter; gluten-free . Usually this brings up discussions on this forum or the manufacturer's website in which it explains whether it is gluten-free or not. Sometimes it takes some digging to find out, but it's easier than calling the manufacturer, which is what I would have to do to figure out if the foods coded yellow are safe or not.

Hope this helps!

[penguin]

I use the Clan Thompson list on my palm. I find that they have good information and they update about quarterly with a subscription. I haven't used gluten guard, but I'm happy with my Clan Thompson Smartlist

[GlutenWrangler]

Nick,

Gluten guard is a waste of money. I am incredibly disappointed with it.

First, the barcode scanners don't always work. It depends on what you are scanning. The cheapest I could find one for was about $165.

Second, Gluten Guard works by evaluating ingredients, not by checking with manufacturers. I can scan a product that I know is gluten-free, and it will show up "May Contain Gluten". This is because it finds a suspect ingredient that may or may not have been derived from gluten.

Third, sometimes it is flat out wrong. For example, all Pepsi products are gluten-free. Gluten Guard tells me that Pepsi "may contain gluten", and Mountain Dew DOES contain gluten. It is not something that you can count on to be accurate.

Fourth and finally, most products that I scan always end up as "Product Not Found". Brand name products like Gatorade and Uncle Ben's Rice are unrecognizable to Gluten Guard. It is a joke when you see how many products it doesn't recognize.

Please take my advice. Get the Clan Thompson software for Palm. I have it for Pocket PC and it is excellent. I got it after a week of using Gluten Guard first. For the same price as Gluten Guard you get the most up to date list for your Palm and Computer, plus updates every 12 weeks, plus an ingredient checker for your computer. Clan Thompson checks with manufacturers about all products, which makes it much more accurate. It even has resturant information. There is no barcode scanner, but it is very quick and easy to use. Your friend should have no trouble with it. Anyway I hope this helps with your decision. Best of luck.

-Brian

[NickZ]

Thanks everyone! That really helps a lot!

I'm going to suggest that she just get's the ClanThompson smartlists and works from there.