Is Organic Coffee Gluten Free?

One of our readers asked recently about if she can safely drink organic coffee when she cannot eat foods that contain gluten. The quick answer is that healthy organic coffee is gluten free. This might not be the case with all coffees however. Organic coffee certification assures you that there is nothing in your coffee but toxin free, contaminant free high quality coffee.

Organic coffee differs from regular coffee in several aspects. The soil in which organic coffee is grown must have been verified as free from prohibited substances for at least three years. In addition there must be distinct boundaries between land on which organic coffee is grown and land where pesticides, herbicides, and prohibited chemical fertilizers are used. This guarantees that drift of substances sprayed or otherwise applied on adjacent land will not contaminate the organic plot of land. Organic coffee certification includes the adherence to a specific and verifiable plan for all practices and procedures from planting to crop maintenance, to harvest, de-husking, bagging, transport, roasting, packaging, and final transport. Along the way procedures must be in place at every step to insure that there is no contamination of the healthy organic coffee produced in pristine soil with regular coffee produced on soil exposed to herbicides, pesticides, and organic fertilizers.

This also insures that coffee is not transported in or stored in containers that previously included other foodstuffs including those containing gluten.

Gluten

If you cannot digest it properly gluten can cause gas, bloating, diarrhea or even constipation. It can cause a rash on your arms and make you feel tired after eating. The primary offender is wheat in bread, crackers, bran and wheat in all its forms. In addition barley and rye contain gluten as well and although oats are gluten free they may have been stored or processed where gluten containing grains are stored and thus are contaminated.

Gluten sensitive people learn what foods to avoid which foods to eat. A problem is that gluten also shows up in salad dressings, veggie burgers, soy sauce and even packaged seasonings and spice mixes. The issue of gluten hiding in with other foods is where coffee can bother gluten sensitive people.

What’s in Your Coffee?

A couple of years ago we wrote an article entitled Coffee Please, No Dirt.

We have found yet another reason to only buy whole bean healthy organic coffee from reputable suppliers. A recent article in the Washington Post noted that as coffee supplies diminish and prices go up some suppliers of ground coffee are adding things to their coffee. The title of the article is Dirt, corn twigs, soybeans and other fillers are appearing in coffee.

Cream and sugar may not be the only additives in your morning cup of coffee. Tough growing conditions and rising demand are leading some coffee producers to mix in wheat, soybean, brown sugar, rye, barley, acai seeds, corn, twigs and even dirt.

As we noted in our recent article Brazil Drought Drives Arabica Prices Higher there is a historic drought in Brazil, the country that produces more coffee than anyone else. The ten million or so bag deficit in production this year will amount to about a forty billion cup of coffee deficit! Looks like some folks are looking to make up for ten million missing bags of coffee by adding corn, soybeans, etc. and grinding it all up to sell. This is actually an age old trick to reduce the cost of doing business while not reducing what they sell the coffee for.

The point of all this is to drink only certified organic coffee if you are a gluten sufferer because healthy organic coffee is gluten free.




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