A Tale of Two Cornflakes

[bugshaw]

Barley contains gluten, but can be processed in a way that the gluten is removed.

Brand A cornflakes contain "Malted Barley Extract".
Brand B cornflakes contain "Barley Malt Flavouring".
Under current food labelling regulations, allergens are shown in bold in ingredients lists.

Brand A has an additional allergens box which says "May contain nuts." If you were to ask Brand A about the presence of gluten, they would say "Of course there's no gluten, if there was we would have listed it." I have happily scoffed three boxes of Brand A.
If you were to ask Brand B they would say "Yes, it's in barley, that's why we bolded it, your stupid fault for eating it."

In other news, does anyone want a box of Brand B cornflakes? Only one serving gone from it. Would swap for Brand A.

EDIT: Or maybe the labelling thing is more complicated, they don't have to label gluten in products that contain less than 20ppm. "Recent evidence indicates that people with coeliac disease can eat unlimited amounts of foods containing less than this amount." Anyhow - Brand A safe for bugshaws, Brand B not safe. Note for new readers: I don't have a coeliac diagnosis, as the test requires you to eat gluten for a month beforehand and it's deeply obvious that this would be a bad thing for me and would outweigh any benefits that a diagnosis might provide.

In case anyone's interested in what happens when I eat a dodgy cornflake:
6pm Tuck into tasty bowl of teatime cornflakes.
3am Wake, grumpy.
5am Wake again, with aching hands and feet. Recognise symptoms and start googling what I ate the day before. Swear at cornflakes.
This is going to get worse from here. Wash and dress now because I won't be able to later.
Worry in the shower about how I will manage work (first day back after week's holiday). Curse the cornflakes again as I realise I will need to cancel pre-paid Pilates class.
Feel like bad hamster-mom for not getting them food earlier, they've run out, I was going to drive by big hamster food shop after work. Maybe hamsters will eat cornflakes.
Thank self for keeping grabber stick from disabled days, and keeping it handy. Pick laundry up off floor or it will stay there for a couple of days. Cat arrives today and it won't want to meet a floor of old socks etc.
Hobble downstairs and put bins out because I won't be able to later. Ow, ankles hurt. Definitely won't be able to drive today. Soon won't be able to hobble 10 metres.
Realise I have moved from "How will I manage at work?" to "No way will I manage, don't even think about it"
Hobble back upstairs having grabbed some fruit, soy yoghurt and rice cakes. Is it harder to carry four soy yoghurts, or to tear open the pack and only carry two? Feel glad housemate is working from home today as she might be persuaded to open me some tins of food.
Curse self for eating all my stash of frozen meals and not doing a big cook/freeze yesterday.
6am Retire to sofa. If I lie very still, it doesn't much hurt. Typing and mousing hurts enough that I can't usefully work from home today, or do much else on laptop, especially as it will get worse during the day.

Comments

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

So very, very sorry. My daughter suffers from similar illness, so I'm aare of how awful it gets. . Have nothing more to say but, Gentle virtual Hug and bugger off you, Brand B cornflakes!

[eleyan.livejournal.com]

Crap, that's horrible. Hope it is over quickly.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

There is something quite unsettling about how well you know how one of these bouts will develop, and how you bunker down for a day of pain. I suppose the only bright side is that you also know you will recover fully, and that by careful planning these events are so rare now. I'll be thinking of you today.

[muninnhuginn]

Ouch! Hope the pain passes soon.

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

So sorry and medieval curses on cornflakes B for poisoning you. But...

'Maybe hamsters will eat cornflakes.' Now that is pure, Olympic Gold Medal Problem Solving. Give yourself a virtual medal - unless it hurts too much to put it on.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Hamsters probably *will* eat corn flakes.

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

But can I persuade them to eat their stash instead of looking sadly at their empty food bowls?

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Boo and hiss! May you have a quick recovery

That reminded me how I was meaning to write a post about how in the new regs you mention, sulphite sensitivity is considered a food allergy even though for most people it's not IgE mediated and is usually dose dependent, and how that reminded me of gluten sensivity where an unknown mechanism was involved.

And then I remembered that probably nobody else would think that interesting

[redbird]

I'd read it, even if nobody else would.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

I'd reads it. If the issue includes sulphites in wine, I am definitely affected by them and the damage potential is similar to Bridget's; more or less OK in smaller or moderate amounts, cheap South American box wines leave me wretched for days.

[techiebabe.livejournal.com]

Sympathies. And that was interesting to read - so now I understand why people find it interesting (rather than boring!) when I explain how I'm affected in certain ways.

Perhaps it is the difference between extract and flavouring. I only ever buy extracts for cooking, far more expensive than synthetic flavourings but at least a) the taste is right and b) you know what's in it. Maybe the flavouring had a small amount of gluten in it to thicken it, like wot soy sauce often does?

Edit: oh, I've just re-read and understood it is a labelling semantics issue, not necessarily an ingredients not being as expected issue. Or is it?

[redbird]

My sympathy.

It might be better to have no labeling, than labeling that is allowed to exclude some of what they claim to be labeling.

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

Oh arse. How highly annoying.

[pentamer.livejournal.com]

My intuition would have been completely wrong there. I think of a thingy flavouring as being something which tastes like thingy but doesn't have any thingy in. But a thingy extract is actually made from thingy. So I'd have guessed that B would have been ok. You need to be forensic in this stuff, don't you? :-(

[mgspiller.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I have helped re-write over 1000 labels for the new labelling regulations & yet I can still be a bit mystified by this. There are technical differences between "extract", "tincture" and a couple of other terms but no-one uses them to my knowledge (which is why I can't remember the other terms). So you tend to just get extracts & flavours.
Malted Barley Extract is an extract derived from malted barley, it could be a flavouring extract but more often the term is used for a colouring extract to give a "natural" brown color instead of the synthetic caramels everyone used to use. Natural Barley Malt Flavouring is similarly a flavour derived from barley malt. There can also be Natural Barley Flavouring, similarly a flavour derived from barley (not malted this time) or Natural Barley Flavouring with other Natural Flavourings. I expect this last is less commonly used as it is a bit of a mouthful & generally thought to be confusing to customers. In fact the technologists that are supposed to write this find it confusing themselves. The last one is a mixture of flavouring derived from barley and other natural flavourings which overall taste of barley.
The "Barley Malt Flavouring" on Brand B is a bit of a contradiction, without the natural epithet the words actually mean a synthetic flavouring which tastes of barley malt, however the bolding of the word barley means it is derived from barley. Most likely it is either Natural Barley Malt Flavouring or Natural BarleyMalt Flavouring with other Natural Flavourings which has been under-declared as a synthetic flavour to make the allergen declaration simpler.
Under the new regulations there is only a requirement to highlight the allergens, not necessarily to explain further but all the supermarkets insist on an explanatory statement along the lines of "for allergens including cereals which contain gluten see ingredients highlighted in bold"
I would suspect that the simplest explanation is that manufacturer of Brand A has been cautious & highlighted the barley even though the gluten content is below the 20mg/kg limit hence you can consume it while Brand B is above that level & sufficient to cause a reaction. For Brand A manufacturer it can be quite challenging to prove that the level is consistently below 20mg/kg.
Hope I've not waffled too much & it makes sense to you & that you are feeling better by now.

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

That's really interesting, thanks for the explanation. It took me about a week to recover fully.

(I also notice several brands of cola have gluten in, which is very annoying)