Reading a Label
Gluten-free, gluten-reduced, gluten-removed. Three phrases, three processes.
Wheat on the ingredient list can be safe. A gluten-free claim on a bottle can be dangerous. Reading a label well means knowing what’s in the process.
Three Ways Gluten Leaves a Product
Not all gluten-free products arrive at gluten-free the same way, and the route matters more than the claim.
The product is built from grains that don’t contain gluten — rice, corn, buckwheat, millet, sorghum, quinoa. Nothing needed removing. This is the simplest case and the one most people picture when they read the words.
The gluten protein is separated out and left behind. This happens two ways: distillation, where the protein cannot travel with the vapour and stays in the still, and washed wheat starch, where wheat dough is rinsed until the gluten separates and only the starch remains. In both cases the gluten is gone, and the finished product is tested to prove it.
An enzyme is added to a product that contains gluten — usually barley — and cuts the protein into fragments too small for the standard test to count. This is the one that fails. The gluten has not left. It has been cut into pieces.
Removed and reduced are not the same word. One means gone. The other means smaller.
The Wheat on the Ingredient List
The word wheat on a gluten-free label alarms people, and it shouldn’t — not for celiac disease.
Wheat starch, washed until the gluten separates out and rinsed away, is the backbone of most of the good gluten-free bread and pizza in Europe. It appears on the ingredient list in bold, because allergen law requires it. It is tested below 20 ppm, it is legal under EU Regulation 828/2014, and it is safe for celiac disease. The starch is what’s left after the gluten has gone. It isn’t a compromise or a loophole — it’s the reason gluten-free bread in Italy tastes like bread.
Distillation works on the same principle. Vodka from wheat, whisky from barley, jenever, gin — the gluten protein does not survive the still. Which is why korenwijn, a word that literally means “grain wine,” is safe, and why malt vinegar, which is never distilled, is not.
Deglutenized wheat starch is safe for celiac disease and unsafe for wheat allergy. Same product, two conditions, two answers.
That distinction is the whole point. A wheat allergy is a reaction to wheat proteins generally — and wheat starch, however well washed, is still derived from wheat. A celiac reacts to gluten, and the gluten is gone. This is one of the clearest places where gluten-free has to be read against the specific condition of the person eating.
Where the Thresholds Sit
The 20 ppm line wasn’t chosen because it’s a safe dose. It was chosen because it’s a measurable one — the point below which most celiacs, eating a normal quantity of a normal food, are unlikely to be harmed. It’s a working compromise, and for most people it holds.
One more EU category is worth knowing, because it sits on the same shelf and looks similar: very low gluten, permitted between 20 and 100 ppm. Legal, labeled, and not suitable for celiacs.
What the Crossed Grain Actually Certifies
The crossed-grain symbol — an ear of wheat inside a circle, struck through — is the most useful mark on a European shelf. Licensed by AOECS through the national celiac societies, it means the product has been independently tested below 20 ppm rather than simply declared so by the manufacturer.
It does not certify restaurants or kitchens. It is a product mark. A crossed grain on a packet of pasta says nothing about the pot that pasta is boiled in.
And it isn’t required. Plenty of genuinely gluten-free products carry no certification, because certification costs money and small producers skip it. Its absence proves nothing. Its presence proves something specific: someone tested it.
The Beer Problem
The clearest case of a legal label misleading a celiac is a bottle of beer.
Most beer sold as gluten-free is brewed from barley and then enzyme-treated — the third mechanism, the one that fails. Under EU rules it can carry the gluten-free claim, because it tests below 20 ppm. The celiac community broadly considers it unsafe, and the reason is technical: the standard R5 ELISA test cannot reliably measure hydrolyzed gluten fragments in a fermented product. The test doesn’t find the gluten. That is not the same as the gluten not being there.
The US regulator reached the same conclusion. FDA rules don’t permit a barley-based beer to be labeled gluten-free at all — it must be described as gluten-removed or crafted to remove gluten, with a disclaimer. Same bottle, two continents, two different labels.
The question that sorts it is not “is this gluten-free?” The label already answered that, and the answer is the problem. The question is “what is this brewed from?” A beer made from barley is gluten-reduced, whatever the bottle says. A beer made from millet, sorghum, rice, or buckwheat is not.
“May Contain Traces”
This phrase is not regulated, not standardized, and not a measurement. It is a manufacturer saying that gluten is handled in the same facility and they are unwilling to guarantee otherwise.
It’s a liability statement, not a test result. Some products carrying it would test at zero. Others wouldn’t, and the packet gives you no way to tell which. For most celiacs this is a personal risk decision rather than a rule — but it should be made knowingly, and it shouldn’t be mistaken for a gluten-free claim, which is a claim someone has actually verified.
We read the process, not the promise.