A few weeks ago, I discovered that Food City carries Kellogg's Gluten Free Rice Krispies! After the General Mills "gluten free" fiasco, I was understandably concerned as to whether or not this cereal would actually be safe . . . along with wondering if it would taste good at all. I'd been so far under-impressed with brown rice cereals. I bought a box (for only $2.99!), and took it home.
Before I ate it, however, I did some reading on a wonderful site called Gluten Freeville. I highly recommend liking them on Facebook too. You can read more about the cereal at this post. It provides very good info, and most important to me, contained this sentence from Kellogg's, "Our gluten-free option is produced in a separate facility, and each batch will be tested to ensure its gluten-free status." Hooray! Kellogg's knows what they're doing!
Onto the tasting. I used to love eating Rice Krispies straight out of the box. That's something I will not be doing with the gluten free version. Unlike many of GF rice cereals I've tried in the past, they don't taste like cardboard, but they also don't taste like much of anything while dry. Hoping for the best, I poured a bowl, sprinkled some sugar over them, added the milk and .............ooh! They make noise!! (I'd never found a GF rice cereal that made the fun snap! crackle! pop! of Kellogg's.) And with sugar and milk? They taste THE SAME as their gluteny-counterpart.
Please note that Kellogg's is still producing their regular, gluteny Rice Krispies. Please do not buy the wrong one, especially if you're making RK treats for a friend who will never see the box the cereal came from. The new cereal is in a light yellow box.
What made the original cereal unsafe, you ask? MALT flavoring (from Barley). I think this is also why the new cereal is fairly tasteless when dry. The change to brown rice shouldn't make too much of a taste difference, so the only thing really missing is the sweetener, malt. Given that once the cereal was in a bowl with milk and sugar, I'm going to assume that if you turned this cereal into Rice Krispies treats, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. All the boxes I've had so far have included a recipe for those treats, but you can also find it on the post I linked above to Gluten Freeville's write-up on the cereal.
Once you give the cereal a try, you can go here: New from Kellogg's and let them know what you think!
I'm hoping they will follow up with some fun cereals (and that they won't try to make them healthy in the process): Frosted Flakes and Cocoa Krispies.
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For the last several months, I have run across people writing about how Post (Fruity, Cocoa) Pebbles cereals were gluten free, because the ingredients didn't list anything bad. Anyone who is sensitive enough to be glutened fast by cross contamination (ex: shared lines) learns quickly not to trust something that just looks safe. I had never eaten these cereals either, so I wasn't planning to find out if they were safe for me.
But then last week at the store, I saw a box of Cocoa Pebbles sporting a huge banner on the box that read GLUTEN FREE. I took a box home. Since cereal will last nearly indefinitely unopened, I set it on the counter and sent off an e-mail to Post asking about ingredients and any cross contamination risk. When I woke up this morning, I had a wonderful reply waiting for me.
Thank you for the opportunity to respond to your inquiry regarding gluten-free Post Cereals.
Post does not utilize wheat, oats, barley or rye in the formulation of Post Cocoa, Fruity and Cupcake Pebbles. We are happy to finally announce that these select products are gluten-free and are produced on a dedicated line; containing no other gluten products. These products are produced in a building that does not contain any gluten.
Since Celiac Disease is a growing concern among consumers, we have evaluated our process to ensure there is no cross-contact with products that contain gluten. We now have strict supplier verifications and a finished product testing protocol in place to ensure that our products meet or exceed the FDA’s “gluten free” standards.
Leslie Spaes
Consumer Response Representative
Of course, the FDA doesn't have any particularly strict standards. Labels vary from company to company, and many companies won't state "gluten free" on a label if they're not certified, but Post clearly seems to know what they are doing all the same. I'll try this cereal as soon as I can, and let you know what I think. I'm particularly curious to get a box of the aforementioned Cupcake Pebbles and see if they really do taste like cupcakes!
