Gluten home test kits

[msorwildwoman]

I have seen gluten test kits for sale onlilne. These are to test foods for gluten in your own home. I am wondering how reliable they are. Has anyone tried them?

[barny]

hi to be honist have never heard of them here in uk and dont think they would be true realy i just be carefull to not contaminate work tops ect and do not get glutoned very often x

[katethebake]

If you really really wanted to, it is possible to purchase ELISA testing kits for gluten which can identify gluten down to 20ppm. I used to use them in my bakery alongside lab testing of randomly selected finished products.

An ELISA test like this can only indicate the presence or absence of gluten at the specified level of testing. They are useful if you want to double check the gluten content of a bulk purchase of a labelled gluten free ingredient. For example, when I bought half a tonne of rice flour, I would randomly test a few sacks to check they were safe. Each test used cost just under £30 so they are very expensive to use and require care (rather than scientific skill) to use correctly.

Incidentally £30 was about the same cost as sending a finished product to a lab to be tested so the only benefit was immediacy of result and reduction in potential waste. Both forms of test would have to be completed before a product could go to market - so for those people who don't understand why safe gluten free products cost so much more - here is part of the answer.

[Hidden]

I had a set of 5 tests given to me free which i did find useful. They were fiddly to use and as long as the instructions were followed carefully gave good results. But, they just comfirmed a couple of suspect products and put my mind at ease. Everything had to be ground up and then dissolved so not the easiest thing to do at home. I wouldn't go out and buy any more of them. There were 2 ways that you could test...for less than 20ppm or less than 5ppm. I elected to check for less than 5ppm. i tested marmite, vinegar, lemon pie filling, bistobest and walkers cheese and onion crisps. They all came out as less than 5ppm which wasn't a surprise since those products don't normally make me ill but since most contain barley malt i wanted to check. Although the bag of walkers I tested came out ok and I then eat those, I wouldn't assume that every bag of their crisps would be ok and haven't eaten any since. At £5 a test, it makes for very expensive eating.

[msorwildwoman in reply to Hidden]

I would like to try the test kits -- do you recall what company made them?

How did you get them free?

marg

[Hidden]

I've been searching through my stuff trying to find the info for you. I can't find it. I made the decision that because it was so expensive and I couldn't really test some of he foods I wanted to, that I chucked all the info that came with it. It was from a UK based testing company so should be tracable. I would love a 'dipstick' that could be used in restaurants but I don't think that will ever be possible.

[Hidden]

Oh, I got them free because there wa only a short date left on them and the member of staff from the firm decided to offer them free rather than chuck them. We were supposed to fill in some feedback afterwards but the company didn't get back in touch

[msorwildwoman in reply to Hidden]

thanks for looking.