Gluten Warning: GoodBelly Probiotic Drinks

You think you’ve learned the ropes. You know when to check ingredients, you know when something is safe, you know when to be extra careful. At least that’s what you think, until you finish a bottle of FRUIT JUICE and realize that it has oat flour and barley malt listed in the ingredients. Yes, GoodBelly Probiotic Drinks are chock full of gluten.

Good Belly, a probiotic fruit drink containing live and active probiotics, is dairy-free, soy-free, certified organic, and 100% vegan.

Their website ironically states that this is “just right for those of you who experience digestive upset from common food sensitivities.”

No, Good Belly, it is not just right. It’s just the opposite for those of us with celiac disease…

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Do your homework. Probiotics are especially important for those of us with celiac disease. With all of the added benefits of probiotics to celiac sufferers, we are even more tempted to grab one of your drinks. Additionally, an estimated 18 million Americans have non-celiac gluten sensitivity (that’s 6 times the amount of Americans who have celiac disease), and probiotics have been proven to be especially beneficial for gastrointestinal discomfort and leaky gut. Basically, there are a lot of us, and your products are perfect for the exact populations that are unable to drink them.

Good Belly currently offers 12 drink flavors, including cranberry watermelon, mango and pomegranate blackberry. They recently began offering four gluten-free options, which are distinguishable by their green caps. The flavors are carrot ginger, coconut water, tropical orange and pink grapefruit. Their gluten-free options are the only drinks they manufacture that are not organic, and they include gluten-free oat flour in the ingredients, what seems like quite a simple switch. Come on, Good Belly! If you can switch to gluten-free oat flour in four of your drinks, can’t you for the rest?

The bottom line is, no matter how safe we think we are, we never are. With so much growing awareness and gluten-free diets, even the “hidden gluten” products like soy sauce are a lot more well known… but fruit drinks? I guess we’re going to have to add beverages to the list of things where we must always diligently check the ingredients. The question we have, GoodBelly, is that if Snapple, Tropicana, Arizona, Dole, Minute Maid, Ocean Spray, Simply Orange, Odwalla, Pom, Sunkist, V8 and Welch’s all manage to make every single one of their juices gluten-free, why in the world can’t you?

Please contact GoodBelly here and ask them to begin making all of their drinks gluten-free!

Giliah Librach is a regular contributor to the CeliAct Blog. You can find Giliah on Google+.