We know it’s historically been difficult for those of you in Canada to access GlutenTox for your testing needs. That’s why we’re so happy to share a new website with you:

www.glutentox.net

If you are purchasing GlutenTox Home and would like it to ship to a Canadian address, you can order directly on glutentox.net and your kit will ship from Ontario to your doorstep. All quantities of test are available: the 2-test GlutenTox Home sample kit, the 5-test kit for testing a few different foods, beverages, or personal care products, and the 10-test kit for those of you who have a larger variety of testing needs.

Through the site, you’ll also be able to contract our Canadian partners to discuss using GlutenTox Pro or GlutenTox Sticks in your commercial kitchen, gluten-free foods manufacturing facility, or other professional setting.

The post Looking for GlutenTox in Canada? appeared first on GlutenTox Home.

Some highlights from our newsletter include:

• Affiliate Action: If you think your readers, patients, clients, or friends might benefit from GlutenTox, there’s an easy way to share the news (while also earning some money yourself!). You can sign up for our affiliate program in seconds, and will be given a uniquely coded link to share with anyone and everyone gluten-free.
• Birthday Bonus: When you sign up for our newsletter, you’re asked for your birthday. We don’t care how old you are — you can use GlutenTox Home whether you are 10 or 100 (or anywhere in between!). But, we do want to help you celebrate your special day in a gluten-free way. If you haven’t already signed up for our newsletter, you can do so here.
• Canadian Chats: We’ll be in Toronto in early March and we would love to see you there! If you’re attending the Canadian Food Service and Restaurant Association Trade show, please do come say hi. We’ll be in the Pennsylvania Pavilion.

Well, that’s the ABCs of it! If you have news you’d like to see included in a future issue of our newsletter, use the comments form here or drop us a line to share your ideas.

The post We Love Gluten-Free! Winter Newsletter appeared first on GlutenTox Home.

It’s been quite some time since we’ve updated here, and it’s hard to believe we’re already in 2013. There are some exciting things underway for GlutenTox this year, and we’ll be sure to keep you posted about those as they arise.

For now, though, we want to shed a little bit of extra light on one small area of the gluten-free world: testing surfaces for gluten. Those of you who use GlutenTox Home generally test foods or cosmetics or beverages for gluten — although you certainly can use the test to detect gluten contamination on countertops or mixing bowls or other hard surfaces! If you aren’t sure how to use GlutenTox Home to check for invisible traces of gluten on surfaces, just check out our FAQ.

Generally, surface testing is more in-demand by professionals who use GlutenTox in their manufacturing facilities, bakeries, or other commercial kitchens. Especially for companies who produce both gluten-free and gluten-full foods, ensuring that surfaces are entirely free of gluten is of paramount importance. We’ve designed both GlutenTox Pro and GlutenTox Sticks to make surface testing for gluten as easy as possible. Maybe more importantly, we’ve thoroughly validated the results to ensure that they are accurate, consistent, and the most sensitive on the market.

To learn more about how GlutenTox and the G12 antibody can detect gluten on surfaces, check out this newly translated article from Alimentaria: Gluten Detection on Surfaces – Alimentaria

In the article, you’ll see that before determining the correct protocol for using GlutenTox to detect gluten contamination on surfaces, thorough tests were done with a variety of variables. Our team tested surfaces made of different materials and with both rough and smooth textures. The surfaces were purposefully contaminated with several different levels of gluten, and were cleaned with a variety of methods. The team used GlutenTox to swab different surface areas, and carefully analyzed almost 200 different swabs!

In the end, it was determined that an area of 16 square centimeters was sufficiently representative and was able to detect 10ng/cm of gluten. A surface that is contaminated with 10ng/cm of gluten indicates that a kilogram of gluten-free dough, kneaded on the surface itself, would ultimately test to have 0.01 PPM of gluten — 2,000 times less than the international standard for gluten-free foods of 20 parts per million!

What’s more, our team did several tests to determine the best way to clean a surface entirely of gluten. The answer? If you have a countertop or mixing bowl or cutting board you want to make sure is absolutely gluten-free, the best thing to do is to first clean it with soap and water, but then follow up with an ethanol-water solution to thoroughly eliminate any last gluten residue.

Happy reading!

The post A Long Overdue Update! appeared first on GlutenTox Home.

In the words of our tour guides:

The Celiac Awareness Tour promotes celiac disease awareness and gluten-free food and beverage products.

Each stop on the Celiac Awareness Tour features presentations by celiac disease experts, chef demonstrations and dozens of gluten-free food and beverage exhibits from local and national gluten-free food and beverage manufacturers.

We’ll be there along with some of your favorite gluten-free companies: your favorite gluten- and allergen-free breads, cookies, cheeses and even beers will be sampling their tasty wares.

Plus, our very own Emily Kaufman will be speaking about gluten. Her presentation on The ABCs of PPM starts at 10:15am and she’ll be answering questions about the intricacies of gluten detection and analysis.

To purchase a ticket in advance or check out the list of exhibitors, you can visit the Celiac Awareness Tour’s Eventbrite page. Or to get some more information on the Tour – and find out if they are making a stop near you in 2013 – visit their website, celiacawarenesstour.com!

The post Cleveland Rocks! GlutenTox at the Celiac Awareness Tour appeared first on GlutenTox Home.

Traditionally items with extreme pH balances have been tricky for gluten test kits, but GlutenTox contains a dilution solution formulated with a special pH stabilizer. To prove it, the team at Biomedal’s ISO-certified gluten analysis lab prepared three very special batches of lemon juice.

The first sample was the control, a basic bottle of lemon juice from the local supermarket. They happened to use Prima brand, which contains: lemon juice from concentrate (water, concentrated lemon juice), natural flavors, citric acid, sodium benzoate, sodium metabisulfite and sodium sulfite. As it happens, the pH value of this lemon juice is 1.64 — not only is it very, very acidic, it’s most acidic than most plain lemons!

The second sample was the same lemon juice, purposefully spiked with 5ppm of  gluten. The third? You guessed it! Lemon juice spiked with 20ppm of gluten.

As you can see in the pictures below, the control sample was gluten-free. No surprise there, lemon juice is naturally gluten-free and the additives in this bottle are not typically gluten-containing. The sample spiked with 5ppm of gluten was tested at the 5ppm threshold and returned positive results. The sample spiked with 20ppm of gluten was tested at the higher threshold of 20ppm and also returned positive results. All three samples had fairly neutral pH values by the time they were extracted and diluted.

What does this tell us? Well, most importantly, it tells us that we don’t need to worry about low pH values when testing items for gluten. Citrus juices, vinegar, wine, and other acidic items can be tested safely for gluten at either sensitivity threshold using GlutenTox Home.

You can see the report from Biomedal below, using GlutenTox Pro, an equally sensitive test designed for manufacturers of gluten-free food.

The post Can GlutenTox Detect Gluten in Highly Acidic Foods (like Lemons)? appeared first on GlutenTox Home.

Those of our customers who are located in Canada or Puerto Rico, or have an APO / Military Mail address only, never fear! We are still able to ship GlutenTox Home to you, there are just a few extra steps.

If you are shipping Military Mail / to an APO address, we suggest ordering through the Celiac Sprue Association via their online shop (you’ll see a category for GlutenTox Testing Kits). Kits will then be shipped via USPS via Parcel Post unless otherwise requested. You can also contact us directly and we can take your order over the phone or via email/PayPal.

If you are in Canada, please use the contact form on our website to get in touch with us. We will connect you with the appropriate party in Canada and get you testing foods for gluten right away! Plus, you won’t have to pay weighty customs and duties fees since your test kits will be shipping domestically.

If you are in Puerto Rico, or anywhere else for that matter, please also use the contact form on our website to get in touch with us. If we cannot ship directly to you, we can connect you with the appropriate reseller.

The post GlutenTox Home via Military Mail appeared first on GlutenTox Home.

We’re happy to share that GlutenTox Home can detect contamination in spreads, even if it’s just a single crumb in margarine!

Our friends at Biomedal tested margarine with varying amounts of contamination for gluten.  They tested three samples of contaminated margarine: one with just 1 crumb, one with 2 crumbs, and one with several little crumbs.

The results? GlutenTox Home tested positive for all three samples at 5ppm! Just as a control, a clean margarine sample was tested and found negative.

 Because pure fat does not itself contain gluten, sometimes special steps are needed to ensure any isolated bits of gluten are found.  However, this test easily detected even just a few breadcrumbs in the margarine. The fat content did not interfere in the detection of gluten at the levels we studied.

Now, you can be sure that your gluten-free toast with margarine is as safe as you thought it was!

The post GlutenTox Tests Margarine for Contaminating Gluten appeared first on GlutenTox Home.

I’m happy to join the Emport team this semester and am looking forward to learning more about the gluten sensitive community. Having grown up alongside close friends and family members who struggled with celiac disease, I am interested in learning how we can help make gluten-free lifestyles easier to maintain.

I am originally from New York, but have enjoyed calling Pittsburgh my home for the past few years. When I’m not at the Emport LLC office or on campus, I’m taking advantage of the many museums, restaurants, and concerts that Pittsburgh has to offer or experimenting with new recipes in my kitchen. My favorite new recipe is actually one for gluten-free baked macaroni and cheese!

The post Meet Emport: Introducing Our Intern, Ruthie appeared first on GlutenTox Home.

Intrepid blogger Heather over at Stuffed Pepper had some questions about the wax used to coat produce (lemons, specifically). Conveniently, we’d sent her some GlutenTox Home tests to try out – and to her lemon zester she went!

To read more about her test results — and the fascinating things she learned about potential allergens in produce wax — visit Stuffed Pepper.

Did Heather find gluten in her lemon zest? No pink line means no gluten!

Of course, one of the toughest things about testing for gluten is trying to identify cross-contamination from non-homogenous sources. Depending on where the contamination happens, it might be fairly uniform or it might only be present in a few items (if an imaginary gluten-free cookie manufacturer accidentally gets rice flour that has a hot spot of gluten in it, that hot spot will probably wind up getting mixed into lots of cookies somewhat uniformly. If there are crumbs on the assembly line from a gluten-containing production run, then the contamination will be less uniform).

Heather will likely be running some more tests in the future — and we’ll keep you posted on her results!

The post Stuffed Pepper Tests Lemon Rind for Residual Gluten appeared first on GlutenTox Home.

We hope to have our line up and running as soon as possible, however at the moment it is going straight to voicemail.

In the meantime, the best way to reach us is via email: info@emportllc.com.

The post Phones Down appeared first on GlutenTox Home.