The Cost of Buying Gluten-Free

[Sharon]

I must admit that I am taking a few minutes to gripe. My complaint? The outrageous pricing on some gluten-free products. I am not talking about foods that are naturally free of gluten like fruits, vegetables, or rice. It is easy enough for us to purchase these at the same price as everyone else. I mean the specialty foods that market themselves as gluten-free – cereals, cookies, crackers, pasta, baking mixes, breads, etc.
There are things I understand about why these products would be more expensive than their mass-marketed wheat counterparts. In most cases, it is smaller, specialty food companies that make gluten-free goods. Their ingredients – flours of rice, tapioca, potato, millet and others – are more costly than standard white flour. If their facilities also produce products with wheat, then they must have additional equipment dedicated to gluten-free products. These manufacturers are also selling to a much smaller market than companies like Nabisco or Kellogg’s. All of these factors combine to understandably raise the cost of production and therefore the retail price.

That being said, I think there is a fine line between trying to redeem production costs and simply gouging customers because you can. For example, my husband and I were very excited to learn of a local gluten-free commercial bakery that provides breads to a store we shop at regularly. When we found their products at the store, we were equally deflated to see a small loaf of sliced sandwich bread selling for $8.00. You can easily find a larger loaf of typical wheat bread, either white or multi-grain, for $1.00 - $2.00. Am I expected to believe it costs four to eight times as much to produce gluten-free bread? I have made gluten-free bread myself and it didn’t even cost me $8.00 to buy the ingredients at retail prices. Commercial bakeries are buying their ingredients in bulk at wholesale prices. So what gives? Are these companies really trying to help people with gluten allergy and celiac disease or just turn a profit on the misfortune of others?

You will find the same pattern repeated in gluten-free snack foods – easily priced two or three to even six times higher. I have never tasted a better pretzel than Glutino brand but at $7.00 - $8.00 per family size bag (about 14 oz.), these are only a special occasion treat for us. And I am not comparing only wheat and wheat-free products. For example, if you check pricing on corn tortilla chips which in theory should be gluten-free, you will find a name brand like Tostitos at half or even a quarter the price of a smaller bag labeled gluten-free.

The big food corporations are catching on – they are realizing that if they can put a gluten-free label on their products, they will capture market share at a rapid pace. General Mills has already refaced the packaging of their Chex corn and rice cereals and are promoting them in conjunction with the Celiac Disease Foundation. As I wrote in my previous blog, better product labeling seems to be the trend with stores like Wal-Mart providing allergen information on much of their Great Value store brand. It is only a matter of time before the little guys start getting squeezed by greater competition. I would love to support the smaller food manufacturers who have blazed a trail for those of us who require specialty foods. But I also need to find the value in what I’m buying and to not feel as though I’m being robbed. When Frito-Lay comes out with a gluten-free pretzel priced at $3.00 a bag and it’s sitting on the shelf next to the Glutino pretzel at $7.00, which one do you think I’m going to buy? Which one would you buy? This is something the little guys would do well to ponder now, before it’s too late.