How do you know if a food item is safe?

Rather than just post recipes, I want to make sure I'm sharing other simple things we're learning along the way, living gluten-free.

I've had a couple people ask me how we know if a food item is really gluten-free or not. Josh and I often find ourselves at the grocery store looking at something, like a Newman's Own Marinara for example, and the ingredients look safe, and it's on sale, and we want to buy it, but we don't know if it is for sure safe. Has it been processed in a facility with wheat/dairy, could there be hidden gluten in the product, used to thicken it? So we'll write down the name of the product and "Google it" when we get home. It's amazing what pops up! Newman's Own website clearly lists out which of their products have gluten or dairy in them. The next step is to also make sure it isn't manufactured on the same equipment as wheat, etc. A lot of times products will say on their labels if something is manufactured or processed with allergens, like wheat/dairy, etc., but if they don't you'll want to make sure.

The other great part of "Googling" something is the forums that come up. www.celiac.com has forums, www.glutenzap.com has a great forum (my friend Jana told me about), etc. It's amazing the collective information out there about products. Many people will share if they have contacted a company and what that company shared, or they'll let you know if they personally had a reaction to a product, or if a product is safe.

I hope that simple bit of info helps someone! :)