Chapter 8

Shopping Is Easier Than You Think

In This Chapter

Developing strategies before you head for the shops

Working out what you want to buy

Finding your best source of supplies

Getting the most for your gluten-free dollar

H eading home the day she was told she was a coeliac, Margaret stopped off for a coffee to collect her thoughts. ‘I knew I had to give up gluten but decided to have one last, ceremonial treat before I started the diet. My favourite treats with coffee at the time were jam doughnuts — those large, sugar-coated numbers with a dollop of raspberry jam in the middle that floods the palate when you bite into the first mouthful. I sat down with my coffee and doughnut, shut my eyes and savoured that first bite. The shop was busy and I was sharing a table with another shopper. I felt the need to mark this occasion in some way, so I turned to the lady beside me and announced, “This is the very last doughnut I will ever eat!” Now I had lost a lot of weight and was looking decidedly skeletal and maybe she thought I was going to die — soon. Maybe in front of her eyes! She stared at me in silence for a long second, grabbed her cup of tea, turned her back and stomped off to a distant table!’

Margaret’s next trip to the shops was not so dramatic. ‘At that stage, I knew very little about gluten — in fact, no-one knew very much about gluten. And no-one knew anything about special gluten-free food because there was none! We’re way back in 1980 here, before rice cakes had been invented, before anyone had mastered the art of baking gluten-free bread that didn’t taste like mouldy cardboard. I had no idea what I was going to eat to replace bread, toast, pasta and all those basic ‘fill-you-up’ foods. Although I had joined Coeliac Australia, my starter kit was not to arrive for several days and my appointment with a dietitian was two weeks away. I began by reading labels on familiar foods — soups at first, because it was winter and I was sadly underweight and truly starving. That first trip was a huge eye-opener, as the stark reality of my new diet hit home. Just about everything I looked at contained flour. What on earth was I going to eat? The relief that I had felt when I first got a diagnosis and realised I was going to get better went down the gurgler pretty fast. This new diet, I decided, was just plain bad news.’

The good news is that, these days, finding gluten-free products really is easier than you may think and, thanks to new labelling laws, increased demand and manufacturer awareness, it’s getting easier all the time. You can even get accurate information on how to avoid gluten, right in the shopping aisle, through your mobile phone.

In this chapter, we start by helping you work out what you want to buy. Then we offer some guidance on where to shop, how to shop and — this is important — how to save money on gluten-free foods. You can find important shopping tips to save you time, money, frustration and the embarrassment of snivelling in the bread aisle.

Knowing What You Want

One of the best things you can do to make shopping easier when you’re enjoying a gluten-free lifestyle is to plan ahead. If you try to wing it, especially at first, you end up spending hours in the supermarket walking in circles, trying to decide what to eat, what to buy and then worrying whether the food’s gluten-free.

Not only do planning meals ahead of time and making shopping lists save you time and headaches in the supermarket, but these steps also give you the peace of mind that the meals you’re planning are, in fact, gluten-free.

Planning your meals

Most people think planning meals sounds like a great idea, and they’re even able to pull it off once or twice. But for the most part, they’re spontaneous and impulsive. They see something in the supermarket that looks particularly appealing (and, because they’re usually hungry while they’re shopping, everything looks good) and they toss it in the trolley. But sitting down to plan meals for the week helps you to focus on the things you actually need.

When you’re planning your meals, try not to think in terms of cutting out gluten, but instead think of how you can make substitutions. Think about the things you love to eat — with or without gluten — and build around those foods, making the substitutions you need to make to convert gluten-containing meals into gluten-free ones. In Chapter 9, we explain how to make anything gluten-free with simple substitutions. Well, almost anything. If you can make Anzac biscuits that really truly (honestly?) taste like the ones made from oats, we want to hear from you.

Sitting down and making a meal plan is tough, but it pays off when you’re at the supermarket with only 45 minutes to get everything and be back home for the next event in your busy day. You may find some of these tips helpful:

• Serve gluten-free meals for the whole family. Even if some members of your family are still gluten-eaters, make your life simpler by planning most, if not all, of the family meals to be gluten-free. This planning isn’t hard if you follow the approach of eating meats, fruits, vegetables and other natural foods (refer to Chapter 6 for more on this approach). And even if your meal includes things like pasta, the gluten-free varieties these days are good enough to try out on the entire family. If they like the gluten-free versions, that will make life easier. If they want to stick with the familiar flavours and textures of wheat pasta, at least you have only one sauce to prepare.
• Plan a few days’ menus at once. Look through cookbooks (no, they don’t have to be gluten-free ones) and at individual recipes for inspiration, keeping in mind the healthy guidelines in Chapter 6. Remember, the gluten-free diet is not just all about rice, corn and potatoes. In fact, the more variety, the better. Variety isn’t just the spice of life; it’s important from a nutritional point of view.
• Plan a marathon cooking day. Maybe you designate Sundays to be your day in the kitchen. With the week’s worth of meals already in mind, you can prepare several meals at once, saving yourself time cooking and cleaning up during the week.
• Use foods that can do double- (or triple-) duty. If you’re planning to cook a large roast chicken for dinner one night, you can count on leftovers for chicken stir-fry the next night, and maybe even some for sandwiches.

Involve the whole family with menu planning. Nothing is more frustrating than spending a weekend planning, shopping and cooking only to hear moans and groans about how what used to be someone’s favourite food is now ‘gross’. For that matter, enlist help with the cooking and cleaning, too.

Making lists

Your spontaneity is exactly what food manufacturers are banking on. They want you to be impulsive and that’s why they tempt you with the delicious-but-oh-so-bad-for-you, high-profit-margin foods at the ends of aisles and checkout stands. How many times have you roamed the supermarket thinking of yummy, healthy meals to make for the week, only to get home with bags of groceries, unable to remember a single meal? Us too.

At the risk of sounding a little basic here, shopping lists are really helpful. They not only remind you of foods and ingredients you need, but also help prevent impulse shopping.

Keep a running list of what you’re running low on or what you need to buy next time you’re at the shops. Make sure the list is handy for everyone in the family so no-one whines that you ‘forgot’ a favourite food (when you didn’t even know that was a favourite food). Stick one of those magnetic write-on cards on the fridge door or keep a notepad on the kitchen bench.

As you do your menu planning, add the ingredients you need for your week’s worth of meals to the list. Oh, and don’t be like us and forget to take the list with you!

If you’re a bargain hunter and read the specials each week, you may find that the items on special provide you with inspiration for some of your meals.

Don’t forget the snacks! Whether your idea of a snack is ice cream or raisins, snacks are an important part of your day. When you’re making your shopping list, encourage your family members to add their favourite snacks — preferably the healthy kind — so you don’t have to hear, ‘There’s nothing to eat in this house!’

Deciding What to Buy

Obviously, the most important issues are what do you like, what are you going to make and can you get it gluten-free?

Keep in mind the two kinds of gluten-free foods: those that companies make as special gluten-free items and those that are naturally gluten-free.

Finding just about anything in a ‘gluten-free’ version If you look hard enough these days (and living in a city rather than a small town helps here), you can buy just about anything gluten-free. For country dwellers, you can order many of these items online. Take a wander through your local health food shop and you may be agreeably surprised at the range of gluten-free goods and the abundance of choices.

Keep a look out for the following gluten-free versions in stores:

• The range of cereals available now is almost bewildering. You can buy all sorts of gluten-free muesli, some with delicious additions like roasted macadamias or goji berries. Gluten-free porridge can be made from brown rice, millet, quinoa, amaranth, flaxseed or buckwheat, with additions such as cinnamon, almonds, or dried fruit. Rice bran straws are available, as well as buckwheat or amaranth puffs, multigrain Os with quinoa or wild berry flavour, soya grits, a ten-grain hot cereal and a supergrain fruit mix.
• New flours include coconut flour, garbanzo or fava flour (both from beans), amaranth, quinoa, sorghum, teff, lupin, sesame and millet flour.
• Pastas are here in many forms — lasagne sheets, fettuccine, macaroni, fusilli, spaghetti, twists, spirals and shells, penne, noodles of all thicknesses and those old favourites — alphabet noodles. The ingredients may include rice, arrowroot or tapioca, soya, buckwheat, besan, black bean, mung bean, quinoa, lentil or millet.
• New ready-to-use mixes are appearing all the time. You can choose from falafel, doughnut, muffin, chocolate mousse, creamy custard, pancake and pizza base mix, as well as a wide range of cake, pastry and biscuit mixes.
• Canned soups are often a problem, but tomato soup is often gluten-free, and a small range of packet soup mixes is available, usually found in health food stores. Vegetarian soup cubes, some available in chicken or beef flavour, are a great basis for homemade soup. Delicious ready-made soups in cartons or plastic packs, aimed at the more health-conscious shopper, are often gluten-free.
• The range of biscuits, crackers and crispbreads is increasing, and even potato chips or crisps can now be supplemented by vege chips, mung bean chips, wasabi chips and even sea crisps with a seafood flavour. Corn chips may or may not be gluten free, depending on the brand and the flavouring used. Coeliac kids can now enjoy an ice-cream in a gluten-free cone, like their friends.
• Dig down into the freezers and you can find a range of ready-prepared pastry — sheets of puff pastry and sweet or savoury short crust. Readymade and filled pastas available include beef or spinach and ricotta ravioli, potato gnocchi, beef or vegetarian lasagne. An array of pies, pasties and sausage or vegetable rolls is also available.
• In the sweet section you can now find most of your old favourites, from mince tarts, custard tarts and hot cross buns right through to chocolate eclairs, apple and blueberry danishes, apple turnover with cream, stollen or raspberry cheesecake — so you can still have that very special treat when you’re feeling deprived.

Refer to Chapter 7 for more on available items, and the sidebar ‘Happy apps for instant help’ for ways apps can make your shopping easier.

Don’t forget that wheat-free doesn’t mean gluten-free. If you see a package labelled ‘wheat-free’ the contents may still contain barley, rye, oats or derivatives of those ingredients.

Remembering naturally gluten-free foods

Many people think the gluten-free lifestyle limits them to buying foods that say ‘gluten-free’ on the label. This is so not true! Many of the foods that you’ve been eating all your life are inherently free of gluten and these are often not marketed — or labelled — as gluten-free. They include the obvious players — meat, poultry, fish, seafood, fruits, vegetables and nuts — but also some products that seem like they may have gluten in them but don’t.

Asian foods — like rice wraps, many Thai foods, and most fish sauces — are good examples of foods that are often inherently gluten-free (remember, though, that soy sauce usually has wheat in it, so look for the gluten-free varieties). Mexican and other ethnic cuisines also offer a lot of naturally gluten-free foods.

The best foods are those without a label: Meat, seafood, fruit and vegetables and so on. But many other foods are gluten-free and don’t mention this specifically on the label. Get into the habit of reading ingredient lists because you’ll sometimes be surprised at what products are gluten-free.

Asking for opinions

The last thing you want to do is spend loads of money on special items and expensive foods only to find that they taste more like cardboard than cake. Because gluten-free foods can be pricey, and because some are great and some are awful, asking around about gluten-free foods and getting opinions from others who’ve tried them is more important than ever. Of course, opinions vary, and what one person loves, another may hate, but opinions can be valuable, especially if you hear several of them. (You know what they say about opinions: They’re like stomachs — everyone has one.)

If you want to hear opinions on products, you have a few options. Try some of these places:

• Support groups: Coeliac Australia has support groups in many areas around Australia. At meetings and functions, you can meet other coeliacs either searching for the same things as you or, better still, with the answers!
• Shopping tours: Coeliac Australia offers tours in different areas, depending on the demand. They’re conducted by a dietitian or a member of staff in a supermarket, and all aspects of finding products are discussed. Call your state office to find out when and where the next shopping tour is going to be presented in your area.
• Online rating systems: A few of the online shopping websites offer customer ratings. See how many stars a product has and read the comments to help you decide whether you want to buy it.
• Shoppers: If you see people at a store buying a product you haven’t tried before, ask whether they’ve tried it and what they like or don’t like about it. At the same time, if you’ve tried a product and see someone looking at it, making a helpful comment is sometimes appropriate. Just don’t overdo it — some people are very sensitive about their privacy.
• Health food staff: Shop assistants in health food shops are often very knowledgeable about products. Ask them if they’ve tried a particular product and what they like or don’t like about it. Ask which items are popular, because this is also a good indicator.

When you find gluten-free products that you and your family love, save the label or part of the packaging. Keep the labels in a folder and create divided sections such as ‘soups’, ‘sauces’ or whatever sections you like. Look quickly through the folder before you go shopping so you can quickly spot the items again and rest easy, knowing that you like the product and it is, in fact, gluten-free. Just be aware that manufacturers can change ingredients from time to time, so quickly review the label before buying to make sure the product is still gluten free.

Deciding Where to Shop

So you know what meals you want to make, you have at least some idea of what foods you want to buy and you may even have a list in hand. Where do you get all this stuff (some of which you’ve never heard of before)?

Supermarkets

You can do most of your shopping at supermarkets now. If you’re surprised by this, don’t be. Remember, we encourage you to eat mostly foods that are inherently gluten-free, and those are at your local supermarket.

Some supermarket chains are more committed to the gluten-free shopper than others. If the one you’ve traditionally visited doesn’t offer much choice, check out the alternatives. You may be agreeably surprised at what’s on offer elsewhere.

Most supermarkets these days have a health food section and some even have a gluten-free section. If you have some favourite products that you want your local store to carry, you can ask the manager whether the store can stock them. This may not be possible with the ‘big’ supermarket chains, where decisions are made at headquarters, based on the size of your particular supermarket. Smaller supermarkets in local shopping centres are far more flexible and will often go out of their way to source particular products for you. And don’t just look in the health food section — you’ll find gluten-free items in other sections too.

The larger supermarket chains usually have a facility for online shopping and delivery (for example, www.homeshop.com.au).

Health food shops

Health food shops have long been the coeliac’s best ally. When supermarket chains were totally ignorant about gluten-free products, your friendly health food shop was there for you, trying new products, responding to customer requests, encouraging developing companies and taking risks on your behalf. Now that ‘gluten-free’ has hit the big time and awareness is high, supermarket chains have come in for the kill and are taking much of the business away from smaller shops. Some of the bigger supermarket chains are now developing their own brand of gluten-free products. They’re good and sometimes — but not always — cheaper.

Variety is important and if monopolies develop, ultimately everyone’s choices will be seriously limited and less competition will result. So don’t abandon your local health food shop. It can offer more variety, and the staff often have valuable expertise. Try asking a checkout operator how much xanthan gum to put in a fruitcake! (We could go on about fruitcakes and who they might be in this instance, but we’d better not go there.) And if you’re buying in bulk (for bread making, for example) you can usually get a good deal from health food shops.

Farmers’ markets

Coming soon to a corner near you! Farmers’ markets are popping up everywhere (not just next to farms), offering fresh produce, eggs, meat, fish, honey, nuts and other (inherently gluten-free) items, usually at lower prices than most retailers. The foods are ripe, often organic and the generous samples that sellers pass out are enough to count as lunch. This is where you may find the most delicious gluten-free products of all — your genuine, home-baked treasures.

Check gluten-free products from farmers’ markets carefully, because sometimes when people are starting up small businesses they aren’t fully aware of the finer points of gluten-free baking (for example, using a gluten-free icing sugar mix, not regular icing sugar mix, which may contain wheat starch).

You can also feel good knowing you’re supporting local farmers and the environment: The food is often grown without pesticides and less petrol is used to transport the produce from the farm to you.

Ethnic markets

You want a thrill? Go to an Asian market — the more authentic, the better — and check out all the stuff that’s gluten-free. Don’t forget the Thai and Indian aisles. Truly, the selection is amazing. Sauces, rice paper, tapioca noodles, rice sweets, things you’ve never heard of and things that you may have wondered about for years — and quite a few are gluten-free. Asians use very little wheat in their products, but be aware that products do sometimes appear on the shelves that aren’t labelled according to our Australian food regulations. If the product doesn’t have a label in English, check carefully with the assistant and be certain that communication is clear and unambiguous. (In some cultures, telling the customer what you think they want to hear is considered polite, which makes it hard to be sure whether a product is gluten-free.)

Gluten-free retail stores

We’re not making this up. Once only a dream for those who’ve been gluten-free for a long time, gluten-free stores are finally a reality. Wonderful little shops filled with gluten-free foods, books about being gluten-free, cookbooks and other important resources are beginning to pop up and they’re thriving. Maybe you’ll get lucky and one will pop up near you.

Websites and catalogues

You can do all your gluten-free shopping from the comfort of your favourite easy chair, any time, day or night — you can even be in your daggiest PJs, if you want. Some great websites specialise in selling gluten-free products and within just a few minutes you can place your order. A couple of days later the goodies arrive at your door — and you may be so excited to rip open that big box of gluten-free goodies, it’ll feel like Christmas all over again!

All the gluten-free food manufacturers have websites, so if you know a specific brand you want to buy, you can go to the site and see what the company has to offer (you can find the sites with a quick online search). Some companies also offer a range of gluten-free products via the internet, for example:

• www.absolutelyglutenfree.com.au
• www.aussiehealthproducts.com.au

Some sites allow you to sort out other allergens, too, so you can narrow down the products that are, for instance, gluten-free, dairy-free, corn-free and soy-free. Some sites also provide customer rating systems. They give you an average customer rating and specific comments about a product. This customer rating system is invaluable in helping you decide which products to buy.

If you don’t have a computer, most companies offer a toll-free number and some will send you a free catalogue so you can order by phone or fax.

The Ingredient List, published for members by Coeliac Australia, is handy when shopping. Whip it out when you come to a product that contains an unusual ingredient to discover whether it’s gluten-free. Because food labelling is now so clear, you can tell anyway, but it’s nice to know about new ingredients and it’s good for checking those tricky things that sometimes confuse, like glucose syrup. If you have a problem with additives, it’s handy for knowing about these too. Refer to the sidebar ‘Happy apps for instant help’ for more on accessing the Ingredient List as an app.

Sorting through the health food aisle

At first, the health food shelves may seem to be the best bet for finding gluten-free foods. But traps can emerge here too.

You’re not the only customer with special dietary needs. So before you fall on a packet of enticing chocolate-coated wafers, read the label — they may be wheat-free, but not gluten-free. Or they may be called rice crackers or buckwheat pancakes, but wheat flour or some other gluten-containing ingredient is in there as well. One of the worst reactions Margaret had was when a friend purchased rice noodles and served them up with a stir-fry when they had lunch together. Her friend knew she loved the soft rice noodles from the local supermarket. Two days later Margaret was as sick as a dog. When she tracked back, she found a new brand of ‘rice noodles’ on the shelf. They contained 1 per cent rice flour — the rest was wheat! She rang the company and explained what had happened when she ate their ‘rice noodles’ and it promised to rename the product. The company had responded to the current demand for rice noodles and simply not thought about such a drastic consequence. (Sure, wheat was right up there on the ingredient list, but Margaret’s friend had assumed they would be made from rice, like others she had purchased before.) Product names can be misleading. The full story lies in the product ingredient list, so always check.

Living Gluten-Free — Affordably

The fact that gluten-free products are more expensive is undisputed. For starters, a loaf of gluten-free bread costs at least twice as much as regular bread and it’s probably half the size. And how often have you seen it on special? Gluten-free rolls, biscuits, cakes, mixes and other items also cost more. If you’re eating out at lunch, often no low-cost choice like a toasted sandwich is available and you have to order a more expensive meal or salad. When you join a group of friends for a catered set dinner, you pay for three courses and only get two or one. Ah, life’s hard — but at least we can eat out, not like those on a truly restricted diet who may die if they accidentally ingest a tiny amount of their problem ingredient. So before you take a second mortgage on your house to finance this diet, take note of the tips in the following sections that can help to reduce the cost.

Scaling back on commercial foods

Much of the extra expense involved in eating gluten-free is in the high cost of commercial products. We’re not suggesting you celebrate little Luka’s birthday with rice crackers to save the expense of buying a gluten-free cake. You need to have some special items on hand and cakes or special occasion treats are definitely among them.

But if you find you’re spending far too much money, take a look at how many and what types of special items you buy. Breads, crackers, biscuits, cakes, pizzas, pretzels, doughnuts, pies — they’re pricey, for sure. But you don’t need them all the time. You can substitute regular chips (some are gluten-free) for a fraction of the cost of other gluten-free snacks. Even though they are high priced, sweets and snack bars that you can get at any supermarket are cheaper than health food bars (which can sometimes be loaded with sugar or artificial sweeteners and not as healthy as you might think).

By all means have a splurge from time to time, particularly when you’re feeling a bit ‘deprived’ on your diet. But for the main part, get organised, find a few simple recipes for biscuits, cakes, muffins and pizza bases — you can get some ideas from Chapters 10 to 15 — and have a bake-up. Your own products will taste far better and you’ll save pots of money. (If you work 60 hours a week and live the rest at full pelt you can stop gnashing your teeth in frustration at this suggestion. Margaret remembers how annoyed she used to feel when she was in that situation and well-meaning people told her it was so easy to bake three times a week. This suggestion isn’t for everybody.)

If you can find the time to bake, make sure you have some ‘regular’ alternatives to offer when friends with big appetites come round or they’ll demolish your home-cooked goodies before you’ve poured the coffee. But if you want to build your reputation as a fantastic cook, serve them up and watch the happy faces. Or you can put half in the freezer as soon as they’re baked — and cooled — so they last a bit longer. Nothing’s nicer than discovering a little container of forgotten friands at the back of the freezer.

If you get into baking in a big way, buying your flours, xanthan gum or bread mix in bulk will save money too. Large families often buy a carton of biscuits or mixes rather than individual packets, and this can reduce costs.

Ordering by mail is very convenient — and essential if you live in a remote area — but delivery costs will add to the budget. Unless you have to rely on mail-order products, try to persuade your local health food shop or small supermarket to stock the items you want, or find similar ones that are made locally. For some, the satisfaction of getting a product you love is worth the additional cost, but not everyone can afford to do that. It’s very sad when you hear of families who can only buy special food for their coeliac, or treats for the other children, but not both!

Australians are among the worst in the world for wasting food! If you’re in the habit of cooking too much food, try to estimate more accurately. Before you turf out the remainders of a meal, think about how you could use the food over the next day or two. Some of the leftover food can be incorporated into another dish or served up as an addition. Some can be eaten cold the next day for lunch — you’ll be surprised at how delicious some foods normally eaten hot are when eaten cold. Try mashing pumpkin or sweet potato with a dash of sweet chilli sauce or tamari and spreading on toast or under the usual toppings in your sandwich. Well, we mash avocado on toast, so why not sweet potato? (Apologies to families with big eaters who always scoff everything down in three minutes and then ask, ‘What’s to eat?’)

Eating nutritiously

Some people think that eating nutritious foods is more expensive. Not true. Fresh produce and meats do seem expensive — they are! But many of the highly processed foods that are cheaper are far less satisfying, less nutritious and may cause weight gain and make you feel hungrier than ever.

Buy nutritious foods, but buy only what you need. Most nutritious foods are also perishable and if you don’t use them within a few days, ‘fresh’ produce isn’t so fresh anymore.

Eating in

Eating out at restaurants or fast-food places eats through a budget in no time. Eating at home not only ensures that your meal is, in fact, gluten-free, but also saves you money.

Sure, planning and preparing home-cooked meals takes time (we give some time-saving tips in Chapter 9), but the money you save and the peace of mind that comes from knowing your meals are nutritious and gluten-free are well worth it.

Using gluten-free mixes

The gluten-free mixes for baked goods like pizzas, cakes and breads may seem expensive and they are. But they’re usually cheaper than buying those products ready-made. Gluten-free mixes vary a lot — some are heavier than others — so try a few to find the ones that give you the results you’re looking for.