Thank you very much to those of you who have commented so far – and, Mimi, I am afraid that some of the tables on the site at the moment are quite old, dating back over a year as that is when the tasting of that particular product happened. However, if we do go ahead and create new tables this year, they will provide you with a snapshot of the products available to freefrom shoppers at the beginning of 2011 as they will be based on the judging sessions which will take place in the first week of February 2011.
Meanwhile, thank you to Micki Rose (about whom I have just blogged…) as it was she who threw up her hands in horror when I said we were not going to do the tables any more, as she had found them invaluable for food-intolerant patients!
Anyhow – more comments would be greatly appreciated
While we were still running the Foods Matter magazine we instituted monthly tastings of groups of freefrom foods (gluten-free breads, dairy-free ice cream, nut-free chocolate etc) and published the results in a table in each magazine – what they were free from, what was in them, what they cost, where you could buy them and what they tasted like. These formed the basis for the FreeFrom Food Awards that we launched in 2008.
When we went web only, we continued to do the tables and put them up in the freefrom food section of the site.
But we need to know how useful they really are.
We are just about to start tasting for the 2011 FreeFrom Food Awards and we could do another set of tables to cover these tastings. But… They are, as you will realise when you look at them, very labour intensive (and therefore expensive) to put together so we need to be really sure that foodsmatter.com site visitors will find them useful.
So please do take a look and tell us (on a scale of 1 to 5 from ‘not at all useful’ to ‘very useful indeed’) what you think. Just add a comment below or email info@foodsmatter.com – putting ‘tasting tables’ in the subject box. Your opinions would really help us!
Dear Michelle,
Personally I found these tasting tables extremely useful. It was the breadth of the questions asked: taste, texture, whether too sugary etc. All that detail really helps when trying to buy these things. They are so expensive, I can’t afford mistakes!
Plus the full list of ingredients, and some are so long, I wonder if there can be any nutrition left in the food.
Shame I don’t live in London, I’d have loved to be a taster!! But I’ve joined the SkinsMatter list, thanks for the info.
P.S. I tried buying some Gfree bread on Amazon when they started in groceries. Was Barkat, which I can’t find locally, even up to 25mi away. Great ciabatta and croissants, but postage was £6.75 on a small parcel, under 1kg. Won’t be doing that again.
All the best,
Sarah
Like Sarah, I find the tasting tables very useful. However, not many new producers are on them. I am now a convert to the freshly baked Celia’s bread and rolls, but I did not see these products on your table. When a product scores badly in a review it should be ‘relegated’ and new and hopefully better product takes its place.
I found the food tastings very useful, not only for new products, but as a reminder of some of the old favourites.
I thought I would really miss my monthly magazine, but find that I enjoy the twice a month e mailed one just as much if not more. Keep up the good work, Michelle.
The list of products is useful – though often the ones it would be nice to try are not available locally.
I don’t know where the effort goes but it might be worth considering restricting the analysis to the main alegens and not all the addatives if that saves a lot of effort. It would reduce the value of the tables to a few but retain the value for many and might be a worthwhile tradeoff if the alternative is not to do them.
Even just a list of products with some minimal description would still be useful. Once one knows what is available one can do ones checks.
I have found the tasting tables useful – although limited in two respects. One being that a key issue for my son is the presence of glutamates in food. The tables don’t indicate which foods contain free glutamates which are hidden under so many different names now even in food marked ‘contains no MSG’ and in organic food – under the guise of natural flavouring, yeast extract, protein extract and about 20 other names. I would love you to include this info in the tables.
The other issue you can’t do much about! We see interesting looking food but then can’t obtain it as we live on an Island and many items are not available. There are none of the big multiples here, mail order companies won’t always send here, and little chilled free fron food is available.