Our goal for Zeer Select is to help people get the information they need to make their own decisions about what products are right for them. To help answer questions about our service, we've listed our most frequently asked questions about our process for determining gluten free status, and our gluten-free expertise, below:
The gluten free safety status is a symbol we apply to a product, to show if it contains gluten, may contain gluten, appears to be gluten free, or is gluten free.
To make it easy and fast to use, we use the traffic light colors for these different status levels. Green means go, yellow means caution, and red means stop.
Zeer has worked with its gluten free experts to create a comprehensive process for assigning gluten-free status to products. For full details on this process, please visit our gluten free process overview page.
At the highest level, our process includes:
We track more than 4000 ingredients and synonyms for gluten free status, and for each of the ingredients we have a page with detailed information and the sources of this information.
You can read complete details about our process, here.
Some foods and beverages are cross-contaminated with gluten in the process of being grown, shipped and/or processed.
Under the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA), as long as a product does not include an ingredient containing wheat protein, food manufacturers are NOT REQUIRED TO INFORM CONSUMERS ABOUT THIS POTENTIAL FOR CROSS-CONTAMINATION.
For this reason, some products that appear to be gluten free based on ingredients may contain some gluten due to cross-contamination, and would be unsafe for people with celiac disease. The strictness of your diet with regard to cross-contamination is a matter of individual judgment in consultation with your medical and nutrition clinicians. Please read our note on cross-contamination and voluntary allergen advisory statements for more information.
Celiac disease is not an allergy, but FALCPA allergen "contains" statements and voluntary allergen advisory statements can provide very useful information on the gluten content of products and the potential for cross-contamination.
Accordingly, we use a very careful and deliberate process to code allergen "contains" statements and voluntary allergen advisory statements for gluten containing ingredients:
We have hand-coded the allergen "contains" statements and voluntary allergen advisory statements for every product in our database, with special attention to wheat. We have also taken additional steps: Even though FALCPA doesn't require it, some manufacturers choose to list information in their allergen statement about gluten, rye, barley and oats. We have also reviewed the voluntary allergen advisory statements for these ingredients.
Please note, once the FDA’s gluten-free labeling rule becomes final a food product can not be labeled gluten free unless it contains less than 20 parts per million of gluten from ALL sources -- ingredients and cross-contamination combined. As long as the product doesn't contain wheat as an ingredient, food manufactures are not required to tell consumers about practices that might cause this cross-contamination.
For more detail, please read our note on cross-contamination and voluntary allergen advisory statements
How do you address controversial ingredients such as oats?
Our experts on the gluten free diet and celiac disease, have conducted detailed research on controversial ingredients like oats.
Our goal is to reflect the latest factual, science-based research from the medical and nutritional community, along with the regulations that apply to these products in the United States, as put forward by the FDA or USDA.
We then summarize this information in a very easy to use format. Each of these ingredients gets a gluten free safety status, and a summary statement that appears on a product page when it includes that ingredient. If you want the full details, simply click on the name of the ingredient, and you'll be taken to the ingredient page, which includes summary information, gluten-free information, and the relevant sources.
For example, please visit our ingredient page on oats. We have made this ingredient page available to you to view before joining Zeer Select - for all others you must be a member of Zeer Select.
We recognize that having the latest product information is important to you, as manufacturers may change product ingredients and warnings without warning.
We have more than 30,000 products in our database with gluten free status. By default, we only show gluten free status for products with data updated in the last twelve months. If you choose, you can increase this limit to two years, which expands the number of products.
For products that haven't been updated recently, you can also VOTE to update the information. Every month, we'll take the products that are most requested, and work with the product manufacturer to update this with the latest product information. This way, the products most important to the gluten free community will be kept most current.
In addition we regularly add new products to our system, or update products - up to 500 per week or 2,000 to 2,500 every month.
(Note: these product numbers may vary over time as batches of products are added to Zeer.)
Between the Zeer Medical Advisory Board and the Zeer Food Research Team, we have more than 40 years of combined experience in the gluten free diet and celiac disease. For full information, please visit our page on our gluten free expertise.
Our Medical Advisory Board includes experts on celiac disease, gastroenterology and nutrition from the Celiac Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School.
Tricia Thompson, MS, RD, is a nutrition consultant, author, and speaker specializing in celiac disease and the gluten-free diet. She is the author of a variety of books on the gluten-free diet, including The Gluten-Free Nutrition Guide and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Gluten-Free Eating, as well as the American Dietetic Association's booklet Celiac Disease Nutrition Guide. She also is the author of the chapter entitled "The Nutritional Quality of Gluten-Free Foods" in the book Gluten-Free Food Science and Technology. Tricia is a contributing author to The American Dietetic Association's Nutrition Care Manual and is a work group member of the Association's Evidence Analysis Library project on celiac disease. Tricia writes broadly on the gluten free diet and nutrition, including a quarterly column in Medical Nutrition Matters for dietitians about celiac disease. She also has written numerous articles for both scientific and popular readers, including those that have appeared in Gluten-Free Living magazine, The Journal of the American Dietetic Association, The Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, and The New England Journal of Medicine. Tricia has a MS degree in nutrition from Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts and a BA degree in English Literature from Middlebury College in Vermont.
Melinda Dennis, MS, RD, LDN, was diagnosed with celiac disease and Dermatitis Herpetiformis (an associated skin rash) in 1992 when celiac disease was considered to be very uncommon. Following her passion for teaching, she became a registered dietitian in order to teach the gluten free diet and lifestyle to others. She received her Master of Science in Nutrition and Health Promotion from Simmons College in Boston, completed her clinical internship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and became an Outpatient Dietitian specializing in celiac disease.
Currently Melinda is the Nutrition Coordinator of the Celiac Center at Beth Israel Deaconess and co-investigator of celiac-related research taking place in our the Gastroenterology Division. Melinda serves on the American Gastroenterology Association's Press Advisory Board and served as a work group member of the American Dietetic Association's Evidence Analysis Library task force for celiac disease. She has co- authored several journal articles on the nutritional management of celiac disease and greatly enjoys nationwide public speaking to the celiac and medical communities. One of her greatest joys was founding and chairing the Healthy Villi Greater Boston Celiac/DH Support Group for several years. Now, she acts as one of their nutrition advisors.
Dr. Daniel Leffler, MD, MS, is currently the Director of Clinical Research at the Celiac Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center an afflilate of Harvard Medical School. Prior to medical school he completed a Masters degree in Nutrition at Columbia University, where his interest in celiac disease first began. In medical school he trained under Dr. Peter Green before going on to complete both is residency and GI fellowship at BIDMC where began work with Dr. Ciaran Kelly. Dr. Leffler is board certified in both internal medicine (2005) and gastroenterology (2008) by the American Board of Internal Medicine.
Please note that content on the Zeer Select service is for reference purposes and is not intended to substitute for advice given by a physician, pharmacist, or other licensed health-care professional. You should not use this information as self-diagnosis or for treating a health problem or disease. Contact your health-care provider immediately if you suspect that you have a medical problem.
For full information, please visit our page on the gluten free expertise behind Zeer Select.