A while ago I received the 5th edition of Triumph Dining's "The Essential Gluten-Free Grocery Guide" in the mail to review. The book is made specifically for American shoppers, but I found that it had some useful tips for all gluten free shoppers.
The first section of the book had good advice on how to shop gluten free in general, including what to avoid (eg. bulk bins and deli counters) and what items might be safer to buy. It also discusses some of the US food labelling laws, which are good to know for Americans, but not as helpful for Canadians.
The remainder of the book is basically a list of specific products that are gluten free (with most of the brands being American). The problem I see here is that companies often alter the ingredients they put in their products, and although this book is updated quite often, there is just no alternative for reading the ingredient label while shopping.
I think it would be better to put out an online list of gluten free products that is updated frequently, instead of printing a large book every so often. It would be cheaper to produce, and could still produce income if there was a charge for subscribing to the website. It would also be more accurate, and they could branch out to include gluten free guides for other countries.
All in all I think the first part of the book has valuable information and would be especially helpful for beginner Celiacs, but I think that simply providing a list of current gluten free products in a book is not the most practical method of presenting the information.
Book can be purchased as this website: http://www.triumphdining.com/products/gluten-free-recipe-ingredients
Thanks Triumph Dining for providing this book for me to review. All opinions are my own.
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