First, a bit of background. I reported previously on the sudden appearance in June of two huge freezers bursting with g/f baked goods - freezers past which I am forced to walk every time I buy garlic bread, five-cheese ravioli, and oven fries for the boys. Since it is no hardship to ignore blueberry muffins polluted with lentils and chocolate doughnuts loaded with pea protein, I am now able to saunter by these so-called temptations without much difficulty, thus ending successfully my first journey on the supermarket's gluten-free bandwagon.
I also went on record with a diatribe concerning the obnoxious touting of the gluten-free condition of foodstuffs that never had gluten in them to begin with - fresh green beans, for example, or unfiltered apple cider. My local banch recently reached new heights of craziness (first observed by me on Monday) with the installation of a special fridge in the deli section, with a ginormous sign hanging from the ceiling above proclaiming the contents GLUTEN FREE. What do you think the chill chest contained? I won't keep you in suspense: sliced cheese, ham, and other cold cuts for sandwiches!
First of all, I cannot begin to conceive in what universe chickens contain gluten, making their freedom from same so worthy of note. Second of all, I am compelled to wonder why the Powers That Be think advertising ingredients for gluten-free sandwiches is desirable or worthy of precious floor space since - wait for it - there is no such thing as a gluten-free sandwich!
I was just concluding that the world had gone completely mad when I stumbled into the gluten-free aisle itself. Normally, I avoid this area of questionable and very expensive products: questionable because they often contain gluten (recall the fateful flax-seed finding) or other dread ingredients such as bamboo fiber; and expensive because, well, everything in the vicinity costs roughly twelve times what it would if our planet had its priorities straight. However, I am compelled to visit these precincts every so often because they form a sort of demilitarized zone directly between fresh produce and the bleeding-heart/socialist/foreign territory where my Hunza raisins are to be found.
I should not have been surprised to see that in the past year the Dispensers of Gluten-Free Snacks and Such have discovered the marketing potential of the holidays, when (I suspect) self-pitying gluten freedom-fighters are more than usually susceptible to the unrelenting bombardment of cakes, cookies, and the like. Still, it was a bit of a shock to find the path to my cherished Himalayan beauties obstructed by a towering cardboard ziggurat filled with 'traditional' gluten-free pannetone in two delightful flavors - chocolate and another one - brought to us by the good folks at Schär. Can you please explain why an Italian company employs in its name an umlaut? Neither can I. The cakes were, like, a million dollars each. No doubt as Christmas approaches I shall be taking out a second mortgage on the house in order to taste test one of these creations (anything in the name of research!) but in the mean time I was moved - whimsical girl that I am - to try one of Schär's other offerings.
I do, after all, love nothing so much as being disappointed by the confections peddled by the Evil Minions of Gluten-Free Agribusiness: it gives me a sense that there is something upon which I can depend in this crazy old world of ours.
I chose Schär's Chocolate Hazelnut Bars, since they looked a lot like the creme-filled crispy wafer rectangles (you know the ones - sometimes they're pink) I used to gobble by the packet in my wheat-filled days of yore. The label hanging on the shelf indicated the box cost (gram per gram) roughly the same price as imported black truffles or fine ossetra from Petrossian. Despite the extortionate fee, I popped them into my basket for afternoon coffee accompaniment purposes. See what I mean? Whimsical.
Did I mention the biscuits were certified gluten-free? I may complain vociferously about American labelling practices, but I am obliged to confess the Europeans have the whole thing sussed:
I got them home and organized a quick tasting panel comprised of myself, Sir, and the Kid Squid. A gross error of judgement on my part alerted the Squid to my nefarious plan, and he refused to judge impartially the wafers on their objective merits. He has, in recent months, become dismissive of g/f products (his approval of Dowd and Rogers' Dark Vanilla Cake being a notable exception) and claimed to 'taste a lot of that gluten-free stuff in there that I don't really like'. He compared the insides to communion wafers, which Sir and I thought was hilarious considering he has not had one of those since he was seven years old. I chose to treat these findings with the grain of salt they deserved.
Sir, on the other hand, ate his 'perfectly good' bar quite happily and reported that he would be very pleased to eat another if it were offered. I was forced - rather against my own prejudices - to concur. The chocolate was of sufficiently high quality to be free of waxiness and the hazelnut filling was aromatic and exotic-tasting. The biscuit-parts themselves were crispily indistinguishable from their wheat-filled cousins - so indistinguishable, in fact, that my suspicions were aroused. Did the non-certified versions so easily available in the cookie aisle in fact contain wheat by-products or was this just another ploy to dupe gluten guerrillas such as myself into paying twelve times the sum required by the strict laws of supply-and-demand?
I hurried back to the supermarket to investigate further and found that the situation was a complicated one. The German wafers I used to consume by the ton were indeed made with wheat but on the same generic cookie shelf I found others that were wheatless (Italian, this time) - though not certified gluten-free. I was willing, therefore, to grant the nice people at Schär a bit of leeway in this respect.
But there was still the exorbitant price tag to consider. Here is where things broke down completely. A quick calculation on my Smartyphone revealed that my most recent purchase cost 71% more per gram than the wheat-filled variety of my youth! I'm sure you would agree that by any standards - even those that seem to pervade the gluten-free marketplace - this was an outrageous violation of business ethics, such as they are in these troubled times. But something didn't seem right. When we had tried our hazelnut bars at home, they had seemed weighty and filling to the point where I was quite satisfied after having eaten just one. The entire packet of German biscuits seemed hardly any larger - if not more diminutive.
I returned to the g/f aisle to confirm my math, where I discovered that the same mischievous shelf-stocker responsible for my flax seed fiasco had been hard at work in between bouts of frozen-turkey bowling and whatever other hijinks the night shift are wont to pursue. The box of Schär cookies was clearly labelled '3 bars, net weight 105g' but the ridiculous tag on the shelf - you know, the one that's supposed to make it easy to compare prices? - contained the unconscionable disinformation that $4.99 was the price for 105 g.
No! $4.99 was the price for 315 grams!
The miscreant clearly did not know the meaning of the term 'net weight.' I cursed the woeful state of the American school system and its deleterious effects on my already-fragile emotional constitution.
Armed with this startling price-point intelligence, however, I was able to calculate that my new-found treats cost only 13% more than their gluten-rich comrades (which, admittedly, were not chocolate-covered) and a full 57% less than the gluten-free (but uncertified) Italian jobs.
Dare I speak the words? The good people at Schär may prove to be valuable allies in the gluten-freedom fight after all. Reports on their pannetone will be following in due course.
As far as my local supermarket is concerned, well - my view is that with friends like that, who needs enemies?
No comments:
Post a Comment