Judging food awards is, you would think, a fairly simple business – as long as you have some understanding of food and relatively well trained taste buds, you are away. But this is not really so for our awards because, as in all things to do with allergy, it is just not that simple….
For starters – what are you actually looking for in a freefrom product? Should it be an exact, freefrom replica of a product which would normally include major allergens such as gluten, wheat and dairy – or should it be a really nice/good/tasty product which would never include any major allergens anyhow?
For example, should you, in a chocolate tasting, be awarding rosettes to a really excellent dark chocolate that, by its very nature, is free of gluten, wheat and dairy and is a first class ‘gourmet’ product – or – should you be giving them to a product which has used clever and imaginative manufacturing techniques to replicate a much loved, popular milk chocolate brand but which has little to recommend it in terms of chocolate excellence?
Moreover, should you be rewarding the manufacturer who manages to exclude a range of allergens from a product over and above one who only excludes one allergen but makes a better tasting product?…. For example…
Manufacturer 1. makes a really delicious quiche with gluten free pastry but includes eggs, cheese and milk in the filling. Meanwhile, manufacturer 2. makes a quiche with gluten/wheat-free pastry and an egg and milk-free filling. This quiche, while tasting perfectly pleasant, does not come near quiche number one in terms of quiche-excellence. But to create it at all (given that the basic ingredients for a quiche are wheat-based pastry, eggs and milk) displays pretty amazing ingenuity on the part of its manufacturer. Moreover, it fills a gaping hole in the freefrom ‘offer’, and would be brilliant for anyone who is gluten, wheat, dairy and egg allergic/intolerant (and they do exist!).
So which one gets the rosette?
I am afraid that this argument raged after each judging session – and was never really resolved as new judges continued to have new input. And that was before we got round to discussing nutritional profile versus taste, ‘raw’ food versus conventional’, dedicated manufacturing units versus ‘deep-clean down’, the importance of labelling….. – for which, see posts 2, 3, 4 and 5 !
I think there’s room in the awards to celebrate both the excellence of ingenuity and innovation involved in the creation of a new product that perfectly fills a gap in the FF market, and the sheer technical excellence involved in the production of any naturally FF product which is simply outstandingly good.
When this combines in one product, as, for instance, it did in Genius bread, the outcome is clear. The dilemma, in judging terms, is how to reward innovation when sometimes it simply cannot compete on a level playing field. The products find their own level in the supermarket but in terms of the food awards maybe you’ll have to set up a FF handicap system!
Could it be that choosing between a fine, incidentally-gluten free chocolate and a multi allergen-free quiche is as a dilemma roughly equivalent to choosing between a gourmet coeliac who values taste and quality and a mother wanting to put a meal on the table suitable for both her egg-allergic child and wheat intolerant husband? It’s nominally a food / health issue – but it’s actually a deeply human one?
Most judges, I suspect, wrestled with it because we all appreciated not only the importance of the awards to the entrants, but to those looking for guidance and information on ‘free from’. The debate was vigorous and impassioned because one minute your thoughts were with the nut allergic child, the next with the coeliac deprived a lifetime of good bread. It was perhaps a struggle because we all appreciated we had a duty to *all* people who might avail of ‘free from’, right across the spectrum of sensitivities – from the nut anaphylactic through to the mild lactose intolerant.
I may have to go think more and then blog about this myself…
Hi Alex –
I think you are right and I think that several judges did struggle with the almost ethical dilemmas that the awards posed. But, as you rightly pointed out on more than one occasion, the shopper only sees the FreeFrom Food Awards Winner or Highly Commended sticker on the product and is not privy to the discussions that preceded it being awarded and the caveats that the judges may have had.
So it is actually unhelpful to the allergic consumer to chose as a winner a product which may be technically amazing, but actually not taste that good and therefore disappoint them when they buy it and eat it?
I can’t help feeling why can’t the manufacturers use innovative techniques AND make it taste good? It’s perfectly possible in the vast majority of food areas, I’m sure. From a purely personal and selfish point of view as a severe multiple intolerant myself, I wanted to see products that were healthy, tasted OK, but that I could eat safely; that added a useful choice to my larder, if you like. These were actually few and far between from the bits I saw, which is a shame, but that may be because I am one of the ‘awkward’ multiple intolerants!
My vote will always go to those products that are aiming to be truly useful, aren’t stuffed with additives, fat and sugar to make us like them, avoid being over-processed and manage to provide us with a meal we can enjoy. It can be done by us in our kitchens, so why not by some of the manufacturers? Is it processing constraints, money or are some of them not bothered about what they are supplying in the bid to get something on the freefrom shelves and into a lucrative burgeoning market? I don’t know the answer, just musing really. There are ranges that manage it and I will always buy those.
I suppose in effect, though, the problem arises because we are actually judging processed food. I fancied a category with truly useful actual ingredients. I came across one on my judging day and thought it would be a fab addition to my larder. Let’s face it, most of us intolerants have to cook a lot of stuff and so ingredients are really key. The odd processed food that fits my criteria is a real treat, though, so they are important.
One last point on the quiche thing: most people in my experience have more than one intolerance; wheat and dairy go hand in hand very often, for example, so what the hell use is a quiche with ‘safe’ pastry if the vast majority of people can’t eat the filling in it? I always tut when I see products like that because I think manufacturers are missing a trick and actually limiting their market far more than they might, which is a shame.
Oh, sorry, I seem to have ranted on as usual. Oops! In short, to be a true winner and get the flags out, I expect the food to achieve both – good innovation AND taste. As Sue said, Like Genius bread. But can we have more of them please manufacturers! Not that my standards are impossibly high or anything…
Although I applaud those products that try to make almost spot-on replicas of tried and tested family favourites without being packed full of wheat, gluten, dairy, eggs and everything else in between, I will always cheer louder for the product that isn’t trying to be something it clearly isn’t! There is a reason one might choose to be a vegan or vegetarian, and it never makes sense why anyone would look for a “meat substitute” when having made that choice. Unfortunatley, those that are intolerant or suffer an allergy, do not through choice, but once they are aware of this it seems silly to keep looking for a substitute ‘digestive’ when there are so many other brilliant, healthy, and innovative foods that contain all natural ingredients that are tasty to eat. Surely it’s time we all tried these innovative products, irrelevant of our eating habits, and re-educate our tastbuds in the art of pure food.
Thanks, guys, for all your comments – I can see why I had such a hard time trying to monitor these judging sessions!
And thanks also, Alex, for your much more in depth piece on your own blog – Coeliac and allergy friendly food – easier eaten than judged
I think , as we discovered when judging , these things are far from cut and dried…. it does need a panel with a wide range of experience and different reasons for being interested in free from foods to debate the cases with different products, and to some extent too it matters what else is on the market…it used to be getting good free from bread or pasta was a difficult thing, now there are many and so the standards you need to reach to be considered an award winner are far higher.
I do agree though too that at the end of the day , the sticker goes on the product, and the consumer is not privvy to our delibertation and so we have to be sure the product that gets the award will deliver and that consumers will see the value in it.
Regarding the issue of emulating the mainstream brand leaders in the free-from product development range. We need to understand in judging these products, that some, probably most, of those of us who cannot tolerate a certain mainstream foods do feel deprived. They cry out for similar, free-from version of popular products which carry with them a quality of authenticity and taste good. There is nothing shameful in trying to ‘copy’ these products at all. Although I do agree with Hulya in that new and wonderful products could emerge with a more limited ingredients list, these new and wonderful products may only go to make the poor allergic person feel even more of an alien if they have unique and specialists foods only to select from. Lets continue to focus on market led product development and not vice versa.
WOW! Really interesting and sounds like a really tough job to judge, and it’s a really complicated issue, judging by the amount of comments above. I’ve tried a gluten, dairy and egg free cheesecake and I got my friends to compare it to their gluten, dairy crammed chocolate cheesecake equivalent. They were impressed, we all enjoyed it, though it could never quite match up to it’s pure allergen filled cousin. These kinds of products are great for a treat, but on the whole the ones I go for are simple, not over processed with natural ingredients which also taste good. You are what you eat after all and I think a lot of our problems nowadays could be caused by contact with chemicals and unnatural stuff which our stomachs were never meant to digest. Basically if the ingredients list is too long, or I can’t identify what they are I’m put off immediately, regardless of taste. Could we cause more problems in the long run by consuming things containing hydrogenised this and that? Oh so complicated. Good work though Michelle and can’t wait to see the results and winners. Keep up the good work.