The Gluten-Free Guarantee - My Supermarket Survey

This year for Coeliac Awareness Week Coeliac UK are focusing on the availability of gluten-free products in supermarkets. They know how frustrating it can be for Coeliacs having to shop in various different supermarkets rather than just one to do a weekly shop and get everything they want.

I, for one, am constantly frustrated at the lack of new gluten-free products in any of the supermarkets I shop in, in Leek or Macclesfield. When a new product comes out and there's a huge buzz about it on social media, the majority of the time it does not appear in any of my supermarkets until months after (with the exception of the new wraps from Costa Coffee) when the hype has usually died down and we're on to the next new gluten-free craze. This may be because I live in a small town, on the outskirts of the countryside, half an hour from any big city (Manchester or Stoke-on-Trent) but this doesn't change the fact that there are people living with Coeliac Disease who need to shop for food! The availability and convenience of a range of gluten-free products (not just one or two options) in every supermarket is something I feel so strongly about and I really hope that by raising awareness of this need for choice this Coeliac Awareness Week, supermarkets will listen and take action.

Supermarkets are getting much better, I must admit, and do offer a lot more choice than they did, say, 10 years ago as the demand for gluten-free products increases but there's still plenty more they could do. This improvement is due to the sheer number of people being diagnosed with Coeliac Disease which is growing at a huge rate. According to official statistics released this week the number of people diagnosed in the UK with Coeliac Disease has increased fourfold in the past 20 years. And this number is likely to grow which in turn will increase the demand for gluten-free food in our supermarkets.


For Coeliac Awareness Week this year Coeliac UK are asking supermarkets to sign up to their 'Gluten-Free Guarantee'. They would like all supermarkets to stock a core 8 gluten-free items, items we use day to day which they feel should be readily available to Coeliacs which are:-

• Fresh white bread
• Fresh brown bread
• Bread rolls
• Pasta
• Flour
• Cereal
• Cereal bars
• Crackers

I decided to do my own research here because I believe the supermarkets in Leek where I live can be a bit hit and miss when it comes to gluten-free products. I know, Leek, despite being a small town, is not the worst place for gluten-free availability but it certainly isn't the best either and I think there is plenty of room for improvement.

My Challenge

During this week I paid a visit to all the major supermarkets in Leek (including a couple that were a bit further afield but I occasionally shop in when I'm at work or visiting friends in nearby Stoke-on-Trent) to suss out the gluten-free availability in each store. Armed with my Gluten-Free Guarantee supermarket postcard supplied by Coeliac UK and my trusty pen, I spent some time looking at each Free From section and counting the number of items on offer. I did get a few funny looks from people as I stood in front of the shelves scrutinising them but I didn't really care, this was all in the name of research. 

Have you filled yours in yet?

Here are my findings...

	Supermarket
How many types of	Sainsburys Leek	Tesco Hanley	Tesco Metro Macclesfield	Waitrose Leek	Asda Leek	Morrisons Leek
Fresh white bread	2	6	2	3	0	0
Fresh brown bread (includes seeded)	4	6	4	6	1	3
Bread rolls	2	5	2	6	0	2
Flour	3	2	2	4	0	1
Pasta	7	6	2	6	1	2
Cereal (including porridge oats)	18	10	5	16	1	3
Cereal bars	9	4	3	10	3	4
Crackers	7	6	2	5	0	2
Total no of items	52	45	22	56	6	17

As you can see, way out in front were Waitrose and Sainsburys with an impressive 56 and 52 points respectively and no score lower than a 2 or 3 which means that in every one of the 8 categories there was more than one product to choose from. That means choice! And lots of it. Very close behind was Tesco in Hanley with a decent selection in all 8 categories. By far the worst supermarket for choice was Asda in Leek. This is only a small Asda store but the fact that this store did not even have white bread, rolls, flour, and crackers and only one choice of brown bread, pasta and cereal really isn't good enough and fell well below the standard set out by the Gluten-Free Guarantee. I will definitely be writing to head office about this particular Asda store. It's a good job there are plenty of other supermarkets in Leek to choose from otherwise I'd be pretty stuck. The most impressive Free From display must be awarded to Tesco in Hanley who had a massive Free From section, by far the biggest display in all 6 supermarkets I visited - the shelving took up pretty much half an aisle! (Wish I'd taken a photo). The smallest Free From section was Asda who had a pitiful 3 shelves - very disappointing.

On the whole I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of gluten-free products available where I shop. It's great to see that most supermarkets' Free From range are developing and expanding. Sainsburys and Tesco have their own very extensive Free From range, consisting of not only all your essential items such as bread and cereal, but Sainsburys even have their own frozen food Free From section including pizza, sausages, veggie burgers, chicken nuggets and fish fingers, whilst Tesco have a few of the more unusual items such as cous cous and jars of their own pasta sauce. Most supermarkets I visited stocked plenty of well known brands too such as Genius Foods, Newburn Bakehouse, Perkier Foods, Mrs Crimbles and Udi's Gluten Free, perhaps Morrisons being the only exception. I'm confident that over the next couple of years we'll see a lot more variety in our supermarket Free From sections, new companies starting their own ranges and supermarket Free From sections taking up much bigger shelf space in the aisles rather than just a couple of tiny shelves pushed at the end of an aisle. Perhaps also, supermarkets will begin to lower their prices of Free From products as the demand for these increases. We can but dream!

How does your supermarket fare? Do you have access to all 8 items on a regular basis in your local supermarket? Please comment below or send me a photo of your local supermarket's Free From aisle.

Coeliac Awareness Week 2014

Coeliac Awareness Week - 12th - 18th May 2014

Can you believe it's been a whole year since the last Coeliac Awareness Week?

You may recall my post this time last year for Coeliac Awareness Week -  'My Diagnosis Story'. Coeliac Awareness Week is a fantastic opportunity Coeliac UK have created each year to discuss Coeliac Disease, bringing it to the attention of the media - I love how social media is a hype of activity at the moment and I'm thrilled that my Twitter feed is jam packed full of tweets raising awareness of Coeliac Disease. It's a great chance to educate people and encourage them to seek medical advice should they believe they have any of the symptoms of Coeliac Disease - thereby helping to increase the number of people getting diagnosed and getting the help they need to manage the condition.

There's been some high profile media coverage of the condition this week too - for example, the Olympic Cyclist Craig MacLean appeared on BBC Breakfast on Monday morning alongside Sarah Sleet, Chief Executive of Coeliac UK, talking about his diagnosis of Coeliac Disease and how this affects him day-to-day as an Olympic cyclist. Most of the major supermarkets have been providing offers on their 'free from' range in honour of Coeliac Awareness Week and newspapers such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Express have featured articles about Coeliac Disease.

Possibly the most important statistic to be released this week in the media by BBC News is that the number of people diagnosed with Coeliac Disease in the UK in the past 20 years has increased fourfold. And it's not because Coeliac Disease is becoming more common, rather it's down to better diagnosis of the condition. Despite the increase in diagnosis,  Coeliac UK have stated that although around 1% of the population have Coeliac Disease they still believe a massive 75% of people with Coeliac Disease have not even been diagnosed which means they are living with the condition and don't even know it! It's really important that people with Coeliac Disease get diagnosed as early as possible, as if left untreated Coeliac Disease can cause osteoporosis, infertility and even bowel cancer.

As more and more people are diagnosed as Coeliac this increases the demand for gluten-free products in our shops, supermarkets and restaurants.

This year Coeliac UK are focusing on the availability of gluten-free products in supermarkets. They know how frustrating it can be for Coeliacs having to shop in various different supermarkets just to do a weekly shop and get everything you need. There will be more about this in a future blog post of mine coming soon.

This year to help raise awareness I decided to target my team of 13 gluten-eating work colleagues. For me it can be quite difficult at times having a communal kitchen at work and I do usually tend to avoid using it and bring my own pre-made sandwiches to eat at work through fear of cross-contamination, particularly crumbs. For most Coeliacs, the risk of cross-contamination is a big concern.

In the past I've had a lot of questions asked by my colleagues which is really positive but I do think a lot of the people I work with still don't really understand what Coeliac Disease is. This is why I want to help raise more awareness of the condition so that people become more tolerant and understanding.

I decided to bake some gluten-free treats and take these in to work with me for my colleagues to enjoy. I baked gluten-free banana bread and gluten-free chocolate brownies...

Now, my office tends to have a constant supply of gluten-containing cakes and biscuits, whether it's somebody's birthday, it's 'Treat Friday' or someone has brought biscuits in 'just for the sake of it' - and usually these are off limits to me. Only very recently have some of my colleagues also bought in something gluten-free for me to eat. Sometimes I have felt a bit left out, this is why it was great that my treats were completely gluten-free which meant I was included and everybody could enjoy them.

I had a very positive response from my cakes - everybody seemed to enjoy them and I got asked lots and lots of questions about Coeliac Disease which was great. One of my colleagues hadn't even heard of it and I really was able to educate her. Everyone was really understanding and seemed interested in what I had to say and I'm hoping that now everybody is aware I'm Coeliac they will be able to help avoid the risk of cross-contamination for me in our works kitchen.

So, it may seem just a small gesture from me to my work colleagues but it has helped raise awareness of Coeliac Disease in my workplace and it's the little things like this we can all do individually that will all make a big difference.

Now it's over to you! What have you done this week for Coeliac Awareness Week? I'd love to hear about it.

New gluten-free wraps at Costa Coffee

After my disappointment of not finding any of the new Tesco gluten-free sandwiches earlier this week (apparently they're only in selected stores - and not in my local one in Macclesfield) I was thrilled to get my hands on one of the new gluten-free wraps now sold in Costa Coffee.

The wraps were only released today Costa Coffee stores and today my luck was in as Costa in Macclesfield was stocked up.

One thing lacking in Macclesfield town centre is the availability of gluten-free sandwiches to grab on the go. If I haven't bought my own lunch to work with me I'm stuck. It's great that Costa Coffee have now released these tasty chicken and basil salad wraps in the run up to Coeliac Awareness Week. Also released in the same week were the Tesco/Genius Foods sandwiches I mentioned earlier - is this a coincidence? I think not.

Costa have teamed up with Warburton's Newburn Bakehouse square wraps and I am already a big fan of these as we use them all the time when we make fajitas. What I love about the square wraps is that they're really quite thick and really do hold their shape when wrapped together with the filling. The gluten-free sandwiches I have tried in the past (Genius rolls at Cafe Nero especially) have the tendency to fall apart after a while and you end up losing half the filling everywhere because the bread has split. Not with these wraps!

Still intact. No filling spillage!

The wraps are filled with British chicken and basil salad and are also dairy free as well as gluten-free

The wraps cost £3.70 which you may think is a little pricey - but to be honest, for me, I think the convenience of having a wrap to eat when you are out and about is definitely worth the money and I would pay £3.70 for one of these again. A pack of 3 wraps can cost £3.10 on their own if you buy them in the supermarket. And because the Newburn Bakehouse have already established themselves as a well known and trusted brand in the Coeliac community, you know you are getting a really great quality sandwich here.

I found there was a good amount of chicken in the wrap with a nice bit of salad (rocket and tomato) and a hint of basil mayonnaise. The only thing I would say is I would have liked a bit more of the mayonnaise - however I'm not too sure whether having more mayo would compromise the solidity of the wrap.

I would give the wraps a 10/10 score because they are just so tasty and satisfying. Thanks so much to Costa for introducing them in to their coffee shops. You can already find gluten-free chocolate brownies and mini bakewell tarts in Costa and I am positive that a savoury product will also be a big hit. Here's hoping for a couple more filling choices in the near future too.

I'm really interested to see whether any other companies jump on the gluten-free sandwich bandwagon in the run up to Coeliac Awareness Week (12th-18th May 2014). Watch this space...