Gluten-free diets | If you can’t fight it, promote pulse flour
The grain industry can either fight it fruitlessly or profit from it fortuitously.
The Canadian International Grains Institute is responding to the mass popularity of gluten-free diets by following the latter approach, investing its energy in promoting pulse crop flour rather than defending cereal flour.
“Where’s the opportunity (for western Canadian farmers)? You can’t spend all your time fighting a trend,” said CIGI chief executive officer Earl Geddes.
“You can’t always beat the consumer at this kind of stuff.”
No-gluten or low-gluten diets have surged in popularity and become a major force for restaurants, grocery stores and food processors. Millions of people believe they are gluten-intolerant, have allergies to gluten or that gluten causes a host of health problems.
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Whether there is truth to most of the anti-gluten hysteria is not the main concern for most food providers and marketers because they are trying to keep consumers happy. Restaurant chains such as Boston Pizza with its GlutenWise menu choices offer gluten-free items on an otherwise gluten-heavy menu, and grocery stores contain a multitude of products that proclaim themselves to be gluten-free.
In the 2000s, grain-based organizations such as CWB responded to the popularity of low-carbohydrate diets by defending the healthfulness of wheat, hiring dietitians to deal with public concerns and publicizing the science that showed cereal grains were healthy.
However, Geddes, who participated in those efforts while at CWB, said CIGI isn’t spending much time fighting the anti-gluten movement because “why beat your head against the wall fighting something that you’re not likely to have any impact on?”
CIGI is a small organization that can’t reach many consumers, but it is a big presence in the world of milling with thousands of contacts in North America and around the world. It has also trained hundreds of millers from most of the world’s significant milling companies and processors in how to use pulse crop flours.
Pulse crops contain no gluten and can be used in place of grains in many products. As a result, CIGI is promoting the use of pulse flour as an alternative to wheat flour for companies that are attempting to create gluten-free products.
“We’ve got customers using knowledge that we’ve given them to put products in the market now,” said Geddes.
“We say to them, ‘don’t sweat this low-gluten thing because people still eat.’ Instead we’re saying, ‘here’s the opportunity. Put green peas in it.’ ”
Geddes said CIGI’s pulse milling, processing and food-making knowledge didn’t develop because of anti-gluten diets. It had started developing pulse research years before those diets appeared.
It’s just good fortune, but CIGI is leaping on the opportunity to promote Canadian pulses, which now make up one-third of its work.
“The timing for the pulse industry is almost perfect,” he said.
“We’ve almost finished the first round of the pulse milling knowledge piece, and (organizations like) Pulse Canada and Sask Pulse have been developing products.”
It’s also an interesting example of how prairie crop institutions have changed, Geddes said. Almost the entire focus of CIGI was on promoting wheat, durum and barley when CWB provided most of its funding.
He said CIGI would probably be a minuscule voice defending the dietary value of gluten, with little im-pact, if that atmosphere prevailed today.
Instead, with CIGI able to more freely exploit opportunities, it leveraging its influence with millers to get pulse flours into more products.
“It’s the approach that’s different,” Geddes said.
“How do I make money on the trend? That’s a whole different way of thinking.”
