Healthy Food Choices: Gluten-Free Snacks

Tips for buying gluten-free snacks. Learn how to adjust your diet to fit your specific health and nutrition needs in this video on grocery shopping.

Take Action

Avoid snacks made with wheat, rye, or barley
Choose fruits and vegetables with a dip
Go to specialty stores
Eat popcorn or gelatin snacks

About this Author

Mary Hondros graduated from University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Science in Dietetics. She currently works as a nutritionist for New Hanover County Schools in North Carolina. Her main focus is to teach children to improve nutritional habits.

MARY HONDROS: If you are following the gluten free diet unfortunately snacks are going to be one of the hardest categories to choose from. This is because most snacks are made from wheat flour or some type of flour that contains gluten in it. If you are in a specialty food store, it is probably going to be a lot easier to find a gluten free option for example typically if a snack item is gluten free it will say so right on the label. Some options that you can eat as snacks that are gluten free are things like popcorn, fruit ices, sherbert occasionally, gelatin, jell-o things like that are gluten free and you know don't have any added wheat in them. If you are looking at a snack trying to figure out if it has got gluten in it, you can check the food label obviously look for gluten flour, look for other additives or gluten under other names like vegetable protein, hydrolyzed starch, starch, emulsifier, flavoring things like that are alternate names for gluten so you should look at those when you are looking at your food labels. Four things--four tips to help you pick out a gluten free snack, remember that you have to avoid most snacks that are made with any kind of grain that is labeled wheat, rye or barley. Secondly, choose things like fresh fruits and vegetables with like a dip, like peanut butter or ranch dressing those are guaranteed gluten free things and it is also a very healthy snack. Thirdly, if you do want to find a gluten free bread products you can go to any specialty store and they will have labeled gluten free items on the shelves for you. And lastly, things that you can enjoy that are gluten free are things like popcorn, jell-o or gelatin snacks, fruit ice and pure cocoa products are also an excellent choice. So those are four tips for helping you pick out some gluten free snacks.

Healthy Food Choices: Gluten-Free Snacks Video

Take Action

About this Author

Member Comments