Medically, the need to avoid gluten is nothing new. In the 1950’s a Dutch paediatrician noticed that coeliac symptoms in children improved when bread and pasta were scarce during the war. This led to the identification of gluten as a trigger for coeliacs disease.

In the 1980’s the first ‘Gluten-Free’ (GF) food products were manufactured for people with coeliac disease – like bread, flour mixes and biscuits.

As a lifestyle trend, the GF product industry really ignited around 2009–2011 and peaked commercially around 2013–2014. Now when you walk through the supermarket there’s no shortage of options for GF bread, pasta, biscuits, cakes, cereals and even beer.

So how are they made?

Removing gluten is not straightforward. Gluten isn’t just a nutrient. It’s functional. An important structural component in a lot of foods. When it’s removed, it needs to be replaced with something that offers equal functionality.

What is gluten?

Gluten is a group of proteins found naturally in wheat, barley and rye. When flour is mixed with water and kneaded, these proteins form an elastic network. It’s the gluten that allows dough to be stretched and allows bread to rise in the oven.

Glutens function in dough gives it:

• Stretch

• Elasticity

• Structure

• An ability to trap carbon dioxide.

Gluten is one of the reasons wheat became such an important crop in human history.

A quick baking lesson…

When you bake a loaf of bread, the yeast produces carbon dioxide as it ferments. Gluten acts like a net, trapping the carbon dioxide (gas) allowing the dough to rise.

Without gluten, the gas escapes resulting in a loaf that’s small, dense and crumbly.

The biggest challenge in gluten-free food manufacturing is replacing the structural component of gluten.

To compensate for the removal of gluten, manufacturers often use a combination of ingredients that mimic some of its properties. These include:

• Xanthan gum

• Guar gum

• Psyllium husk

• Modified starches

• Hydrocolloids

These ingredients do help improve texture, structure and moisture retention of the dough. But none behave exactly like gluten. This is why the texture of GF bread often feels different to regular bread.

Why do Gluten-Free products often taste different?

GF foods tend to be drier, denser, and more fragile/crumblier than their gluten-containing counterparts. In order to create an acceptable texture, food manufacturers need to add in ingredients, resulting in a longer ingredients list, changes in taste, and differences in nutrition profile.

A gluten-free label is not (always) a ‘healthier’ label

One of the biggest misconceptions is that gluten-free automatically means healthier.

To recreate the texture of wheat-based products, manufacturers often use ingredients such like rice flour, potato, corn, or tapioca starch.

These ingredients can work extremely well texturally, but they don’t always provide the same nutritional profile as (particularly) wholegrain wheat flour. As a result, some gluten-free products may contain:

• Less fibre

• Less protein

• More refined starch

In some cases, manufacturers also add extra fat or sugar to improve mouthfeel and flavour.

NOTE: This doesn’t mean gluten-free foods are unhealthy either. It simply means that “gluten-free” describes the absence of gluten, not the overall nutritional quality of a product.

Why are Gluten-Free products more expensive?

It is much more costly to produce GF foods – because gluten is an allergen, manufacturers need to take additional precautions to prevent contamination from gluten-containing grains.

This can involve:

• Dedicated production lines

• Separate storage facilities

• Additional cleaning procedures

• Regular testing

• Certification schemes

These measures increase cost of production. When you buy a GF loaf of bread, you’re not just paying for different ingredients. You’re also paying for the systems that ensure the product remains safe for people who need it.

What about oats?

Oats can be confusing. A common assumption is that oats contain gluten when in fact, oats are naturally gluten-free. Some packets of oats carry a gluten-free label, but others don’t, despite both having the same single ingredient.

This is down to contamination.

Oats are often grown in fields near wheat, barley or rye. They’re frequently transported using the same vehicles and processed in the same facilities on the same lines. As a result, traces of gluten-containing grains can accidentally find their way into oat products.

For most people this isn’t a problem but for someone with coeliac disease, even these small amounts of contamination can cause a reaction.

Certified gluten-free oats are produced using carefully controlled supply chains and undergo testing to ensure gluten levels remain below regulatory limits.

Gluten-Free is a reformulation label not a removal label.

GF foods are reformulations of their gluten-containing counterparts, not the extraction and removal of gluten from a wheat-based food.

GF foods have an entirely different recipe using alternative ingredients. Manufacturers build a completely new product designed to achieve a similar result.

That’s why gluten-free foods can differ in taste, texture, nutrition and cost.

In a world where everyone is banging on about their unprocessed lives…

… take a minute of appreciation for the food technologists that manage to come up with a safe way for coeliacs to enjoy bread – maybe it’s not exactly the same, but when you understand the challenges, you understand that it’s the best it can be!