Danon Yogurt

[qvista]

I recently e-mailed Danon questioning if their Activa line of yogurt was gluten free. Their response covered the whole spectrum of Danon products. You would think yogurt, especially the series so touted for digestive health benefits, would be gluten free, or as the rep put it, "gluten safe." Here is what she had to say about Dannon:

>Thank you for contacting The Dannon Company, Inc. We sincerely appreciate your interest in Dannon yogurt products and gluten.

Dannon yogurt products are characterized as either gluten safe or not gluten safe.

Our Dannon Plain Lowfat, Plain Nonfat and Plain Natural are all gluten safe. Plain DanActive (formerly called Original DanActive) is also gluten safe.

All other Dannon yogurts and yogurt drinks cannot be designated as gluten safe because the natural flavor systems used might have ingredients added to stabilize the flavor that may be derived from gluten sources. These products are not specifically formulated to contain gluten (except for the Light & Fit Crave Control yogurt noted below) but we cannot guarantee that the alcohol portion of the natural flavor system is always derived from corn and not from wheat, oats, rye and barley. We recommend you consult your allergist on the incidence of gluten proteins in ethanol derived from grains.

Additionally, we now produce Light & Fit Crave Control yogurt, a product which contains wheat. In fact you will find that we have labeled both the overwrap and foil of these products with the following: "Contains milk and wheat."

We hope this information is helpful to you. As an additional resource, you may wish to visit the website: www.celiac.com. Once again, thank you for contacting Dannon.

Sincerely,

Lisa Moore

Consumer Response Representative

[tarnalberry]

if they're just talking about the alcohol used to extract flavor compounds, I wouldn't even worry about it. (this is my pet-peeve complication in the gluten-free diet... rargh!)