Gluten Free Packaged Food Is Expensive!

[Kimbalou]

Wow, today I bought some gluten-free packaged things like pretzels, cornbread mix, cookie mix, bread, cheese...it is about twice as much as regular food. Do you guys buy online or wait for sales or what? I guess it's worth it to feel healthy again. I got a few pastas on sale, but geesh!

[polarbearscooby]

You can kind some foods cheap at (Company Name Removed - They Spammed This Forum and are Banned)

Mostly I try to find 'regular' foods that I can eat...and then only buy the substitutes I HAVE to, like noodles and cookies and such

Then again i live in the middle of no where, the closest store I can find gluten-free noodles is 45 minutes away

[kareng]

Cheese is gluten free unless you buy the beer cheese my hub did at a specialty place. Lots of food is gluten-free, it's mainly baked goods & pasta you have to get special. Even pasta you can get Thai kitchen rice noodles at the grocery. Walmart, Target, Sams Club and Costco have some gluten-free things cheaper than WF. Read around on here and you can find more ideas.

[Kimbalou]

Thank you Karen G

[i-geek]

I tend to favor snacks like Kettle Chips or Tostitos corn chips over pretzels, and make cookies and breads from scratch, although I don't make them often. There are excellent recipes on the Open Original Shared Link and Open Original Shared Link blogs. Although...I did buy a box of Glutino's Gluten-Free Pantry all-purpose flour so that I could use a nut bread recipe from one of my old favorite cookbooks. It turned out perfectly and i took it to a church social this morning where it got gobbled up. Since I don't bake often and I'm pressed for time this year, I might just buy a bunch of that flour and use it for my favorite Christmas cookies.

I've never had a problem with standard Kraft, Meijer store-brand, or Kroger store-brand cheeses (or other dairy). Watch out for Dannon yogurts, but Yoplait are gluten-free. So many foods are naturally gluten-free that we don't eat a lot of highly processed stuff.

[Skylark]

If you try to eat like you used to, it's going to be expensive. Try to switch to rice, potatoes, corn tortillas (Mission has dedicated lines), rice cakes (Lundburg, not Quaker), and other mainstream foods that are naturally gluten-free. The dedicated facilities, specialty flours, expensive ingredients like xanthan gum, and ELISA testing to make gluten-free breads, cookies, pretzels, and other foods that are normally made with wheat drives the cost up.

Remember that veggies, fruits, meats you cook yourself, cheese, yogurt, beans, and lots of other "normal" groceries are naturally gluten-free.