More Free-From Foods Coming to Grocery Stores

According to the news broadcasts, not only did the Peanut Corporation of America distribute peanut products contaminated with salmonella, but it did so deliberately, often redoing tests until it found a portion of a batch that was salmonella-free and passing the whole batch off as good.

With all the constant and hyperbolic mockery that people have gotten for insisting that schoolrooms, airplanes, and other public facilities be totally peanut-free, who's having the last laugh now?

Anyway, the future belongs to specialty foods, foods that are "free from" some allergen.

Hollie Shaw of The Financial Post wrote an article about "this year's Grocery Innovations Canada trade show, an annual Toronto-area exhibition of upcoming packaged foods in Canada," which I found on the StarPhoenix site.

Some specifics from the article:

The response to O' Doughs, a year-old line of gluten-free breads whose ingredients include potato, rice and chick pea flour, "has been outstanding" said Ari Wineberg, president of the North York, Ont. company.

And U. S. Natural foods giant Hain Celestial Group Inc. recently relaunched its Arrowhead Mills line of boxed pastas, cakes and cookie mixes - which had always been gluten-free - with large 'gluten free' lettering on its new packaging.

"It's a marketing opportunity," said Brian White, director of national business development at Hain Celestial Canada. "Retailers have been creating a gluten-free segment within their stores."

Major producers have also been treading gradually into the hypo-allergenic food space, although the smaller food producers note many of the larger corporations use preservatives or neglect to label other major food allergens properly such, milk, eggs, soy, or sulphites.