Gluten-free Snacks on the Plane – MadeGood Minis

What gluten-free snacks are here? I’m starving and I can’t get up!

No, I’m not taking the piss out of a TV commercial; I’m on a plane, the seat belt sign is on (turbulence), the refreshment cart has passed through, and I haven’t eaten today.  Unless you count a small bag of Haribo Gummi Bears, a Starbucks Cafe Mocha, and a breath mint that I found at the bottom of my bag.  

This is exactly the kind of situation where we rely on gluten-free snacks!

It’s not that I was trying to starve myself. It’s just that my meeting lunch got screwed up by the caterers, and I couldn’t eat it. I was ordered a pan-crisped tofu stir fry (it should have been faaaaabulous!), but the newbie at the caterers decided that the gluten-free, vegetarian Asian stir fry would be better over…..gluten-full tri-color fusilli pasta.   

Sigh. 

Most Celiacs will tell you that starving beats sick.  The lovely, fat, color-ribboned fusilli could not possibly be gluten-free.  Our stuff just doesn’t look that pretty. So I had the facilities person call the caterers.  Yeah.   Just as I thought.  It was supposed to be over rice, and there was a mistake.  

Yes, it was a gluten emergency!

Thank God for Gummi Bears, because there were NO quick gluten-free eats to be had in Dartmouth, NS’s “Dartmouth Crossing” retail area, which was where I was near.  (I had eaten a delicious seared salmon safely at Moxie’s the previous night but didn’t have time for a sit-down meal).  So I needed to rely on gluten-free snacks.

Halifax Airport was my next stop, and the food choices were no more optimistic.  Thank God for Starbucks and its caloric coffee drinks.  

So here I am on my flight, staring at this bag in my work tote from a flight last week: 


Notice all the symbols on it? So did I. What was conspicuously missing? The gluten-free symbol.  So I turned it over and read the back:


Hmmmmm.   I figured that it *looks* ok. But why don’t they have the gf symbol? It bothered me that there were symbols for pretty much everything except for gluten-free.  Because hey, if you’re going to go to all that trouble to let the world know that you are so safe for so many…why are you not confident enough to add the gf logo? 

For once, Google didn’t help

I had a wonderful flight attendant who wanted to help, but she couldn’t be 100% sure herself…she couldn’t find the logo either that would confirm that they were gluten-free snacks!  We mused over the listing of “pure rolled oats” on the label.  Did that mean “Pure Oats”, the specifically gf oats that are the ONLY oats that are safe for us? Or that it was *only* rolled oats and no other grain?  So confusing.  So I’d held onto this bag in case of emergency, which was now, but I’d forgotten to check if it was safe. Oops.  

There was only one thing to do, but I’d have to wait until I hit the tarmac, which was no help to my growling stomach:  Google. That told me absolutely nothing because this flavor wasn’t sold or made in the US at that time, and the US MadeGood products were all proudly gluten-free, but the Canadian site didn’t mention it. I guess this will have to be a phone call kinda situation.   

Solving the MadeGood Minis gluten-free snacks mystery

2024 Update!  MadeGood Canada now has the same site as the US!  So everything is on there now.

So fast forward to the next day, and I left a message for the Canadian distributor of MadeGood (Riverside Natural Foods) about their gluten-free snacks. I got a call back from the friendly and personable Armando from that very company.   He was completely sympathetic…. and a fellow Celiac! Turns out that all MadeGood products ARE gluten-free.  He let me know that they will be changing the website and the packaging to reflect their gluten-free status.  

2024 Update!  This absolutely happened, and the packages do have the gluten-free symbol!

So, I solved the mystery: MadeGood products from Canada, like their US counterparts, are safe for us.  So next time I’m up in the air with a snack bag of MadeGood, I’ll feel free to indulge!  

2024 Update!  I have now indulged in gluten-free snacks by MadeGood and their delicious Minis many, many times, and they are really good.  Sort of like a Celiac-safe, gluten-free granola energy ball.  Yum. 

Happy eating! x

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