Saturday, August 21, 2010

Japanese Gluten Free Snacks and Foods

From my Tokyo trip, I find two Japanese brands that care about different kind of allergies. They have product search tool on their websites through which you may select your allergens and search for products without them. I believe most of these products can be found in Sogo supermarket and probably City'Super.

Nagatanien 永谷園 product search You could use google translator to help you pick your allergens (小麦 is wheat). They'd then show you all prodcuts without the specific ingredients. One of their products I always get is the GF curry sauce. As with most GF products, it is targeted towards babies and kids... but who cares as long as it is tasty.


One of their labels, A-label's instant curry is available at Little Giant. I like to serve it on rice for a quick and easy meal.


Another GF product they have is this japanese flavour topping you add to your rice for taste. They usually have sesame, seaweeds, and other flavouring inside. I believe I've seen this in Sogo. Next time if you just want a simple dinner, or a soup base, this flavour topping should help! Update: the ones at Sogo do contain flavour enhacer (E6???) so it may contain gluten afterall?


kamedaseika 亀田製菓株式会社 is another brand that allows you to do a product search on their website based on the key allergy ingredients like egg, wheat, dairy, beef, etc. Again, you may use the google translator to help. Below are some products I got from Japan. I will confirm if they are available in Hong Kong.


Other brands: In Japan, many products start to have allergy information on their packaging now. Below are some Pokka brand soups that do not appear to contain wheat. The one to the left has the "allergy table" on the package (see below). I believe they are gluten-free by just reading the kanji 漢字. I bought them regardless.

Same for these Calbee Vegips and the potato cubes. Their ingredient list is relatively short including just the veggie and salt. No gaurantee on cross contamination though.


The guide: Indeed, for some Japanese products, they have a table on their packaging listing the key allergy ingredients. Look for your allergens, 小麦 wheat in our case (third to the left, top row). As it is not highlighted, the product does NOT contain wheat. As Japanese seems to be some very careful people, I hope by saying no wheat, means it is also free of wheat related MSG. =)


Also see my other post for the GF soy sauce from Japan.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks helped a lot hehe planing on going to see a friend and explore :3

    ReplyDelete