Gluten-free baked goods coming to local Whole Foods

October 9, 2005

I just got back from the Stanford Celiac Conference; the conference was

outstanding and I came home stuffed. As an extra treat, we had the pleasure

of hearing the newly-crowned Miss Santa Cruz County, Ruth , sing for

us; her voice is fabulous and the performance was a great treat after hours

of learning about CD. Ruth has chosen as her platform to increase awareness

of celiac disease (she has several family members with celiac disease) and

was at the conference to learn more about it.

I had another unexpected treat: Whole foods had a vendor table there with

samples of their gluten-free baked goods. For those of you who don't know,

Whole Foods has a huge bakery dedicated to gluten-free products in North

Carolina. For some time these products have been available at their east

coast stores, and we could only hope to find someone traveling east to bring

us back a sample. Well, now our time has come: Whole Foods will have

gluten-free baked goods at ALL their stores starting THIS MONDAY (the Palo

Alto already has them for sale right now). We got to taste samples of all

the goodies (the pies were the most popular item; they ran out before I got

there). They have a great selection of breads, muffins, cakes, cookies,

scones, and pies. I got to meet Lee Tobin, the celiac baker responsible for

these GF goodies. Apparently the bakery is selling everything they make as

fast as they can make it; in fact, we have to thank our east coast celiac

brethren for sacrificing some of their goodies so we could get these treats

out west. Lee told me that he had to temporarily discontinue several items

in order to have the capacity to bake enough for us, generating a slew of

complaints from deprived celiacs. Maybe we can get our own bakery some

day...

For more information, check out their web site:

Pam Newbury

Santa Cruz Celiac Support Group

831-423-6904

pknewbury@...

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