I have wanted to attend the gluten free expo for years and today I finally made it! The expo I attended was hosted by Nourished Festival and held at the Lake County Fairgrounds in Grayslake, IL.
I have been Gluten Free, Dairy Free and Soy Free for 15-1/2 years at this point. When I first went GF, there were very few options and most options still had dairy or soy so I was out of luck. Thankfully, the allergy food market has taken off and it is much easier to find options of all kinds to meet the needs of many with food allergies like me. I am also very aware that many of my clients follow a Gluten Free lifestyle to help reduce a variety of symptoms (that vary by individual) so I thought this would be a great topic of discussion. I am very passionate about food allergies because I have had to learn the hard way! Just because a product is gluten free does NOT mean that **I** can eat it or use it. There are so many gluten free products that use dairy and soy that those products are not something that I even consider consuming. A few of my favorite vendors that attended were: Red Plate Foods - they have fantastic baked goods that are free of the Top 9 allergens and they are considered School Friendly because no nuts are used. I can attest that the Lemon Blueberry muffins, Vanilla cupcakes and Chocolate cupcakes are all fantastic! Today I was able to try a cookie and their granola and I will definitely continue to buy their products! Currently, I buy them at Fresh Thyme (grocery store), but the lady at the Expo said that Fresh Thyme is trying to push the company out (NOT HAPPY TO HEAR THAT AT ALL)!! I hope you are listening @FreshThyme!!!! @GiftedBreads had AMAZING pretzel bread and baguettes! Made in Chicago! I absolutely love their products!! There are a few that don't meet my dietary restrictions, but absolutely DELISH!!! I will definitely be ordering! @epicure was also a very interesting company that peaked my interest because they use only CLEAN ingredients AND unlike U.S.A. companies (see below), Canada requires them to list ALL ingredients used in a product, even if it's a very small %. This is very interesting and I bought quite a few products to try from epicure so I can report on them later. I even bought some products that I personally won't eat (I'm one of the pickiest eaters on the planet), but clean ingredients are better for EVERYONE! Food can be used as medicine! Each package provides a recipe and options of how to make a dish vegetarian in some cases. I also bought 2 spices to try as well. The products I purchased are Kosher checked, Gluten Free and Non-GMO verified. This is a company to keep an eye on for healthier choices for some of your favorite dishes! @whoa! dough also had great chocolate chip cookies at the Expo and I'm looking forward to trying their on the go bars! The hostess said that they are available for sale at Fresh Thyme, but the Fresh Thyme closest to my house does not appear to have them. I looked in multiple locations for them and never found them. I will have to buy online if I cannot buy them locally. I did notice that a lot of my "tried and true" allergy friendly companies that I buy from weekly, were not present at the Expo. I hope that that changes in the future and the Expo grows in size. An Arbonne representative was at the Expo, a candle maker, 2 medical tens equipment companies (AND YES, I did buy one - to be reported on later), a few Asian restaurants, bakeries, spices, BBQ sauces, chocolatiers, some pasta makers, quite a few snack companies, some meat sticks and a random company to refinish your kitchen cabinets (with no person present at the booth). It would have been nice to see more lifestyle companies that support the healthier living, low tox lifestyle that many on allergy friendly diets follow already. Ya can't win them all though and it's ok. I did receive some fantastic coupons and lots of samples that I can report on later. It was an enjoyable few hours with the family and hopefully they come back to the Chicagoland area next year with even more offerings! FYI - In the US, food companies can hide ingredients in a variety of ways. For a Gluten Free product to be labelled as such in the US, the packaged food must contain LESS THAN 20 parts per million (ppm) of gluten to be labelled Gluten Free. Guess what??? For SOME OF US, that's not good enough! You know those, Gluten Free Cheerios that are advertised as Gluten Free. They make me ILL! Just because a USA product says it's Gluten Free does NOT mean that some will not react to it. It's probably safe for the majority of people, but not all. The FDA also does not define the terms "dairy free", "milk free" etc. and milk is the most common undeclared food allergen! So folks, be careful out there if you have FOOD ALLERGIES! Do your own research, call/email companies for more information on their sourcing of ingredients and know what the "tolerance" levels are for YOUR particular allergy. Nobody is going to look out for you as well as yourself! Found My Voice, Inc. 2541 Division Street, Suite 106 Joliet, IL 60435 815-396-4488 [email protected]
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September 2024
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