Friday, September 13, 2013

Educated at the grocery store

In honor of National Celiac Awareness Day, we attended the gluten-free event at Wegmans in Mount Laurel. Once again, I was surprised by what I didn't already know.

This grocery store chain has an abundance of gluten-free products. More impressively is that many of these items are store-brand, so they are less expensive than other brands, but its also a high-quality and diverse line.

The afternoon-evening event offered samples of at least 15 GF products, which were presented in stations adorned with balloons around the store and manned by employees who seemed to know their respective items well. In addition to a taste, shoppers received details about ingredients, nutritional information and where to find the items in the store.


As expected, some of the Wegmans products were featured prominently, including blueberry waffles, an orange-ginger stir fry sauce, organic pork Tuscan sausage and heat-and-serve vegan chili. I buy the waffles regularly, but the latter three were all new to me. Each one was worth considering for purchase.

I was pleasantly surprised that the store also featured an equal number of products outside its company brand. Among the selections were parmesan crisps by Kitchen Table Bakers and bake-in-a-bag GF pizza by Conte's Pasta, as well as graham crisps and GF sandwich wraps. I had had the first two recently, but the others were new discoveries. All were good.

According to Wegmans, the Mount Laurel store was the only one of the chain's seven New Jersey locations to hold such an event. Joining the party was was the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness. The group had two tables in the store's dedicated GF section, offering a wealth of information about celiac disease.

While the event was going on, the store also was hosting its usual Friday night movie in the upper level seating area for the market. As "The Smurfs" showed in the large screen, children and their parents were offered bites of peanut butter and jelly on Udi's GF sandwich bread, strawberry yogurt topped with GF granola by Bakery On Main, and Annie's Homegrown Cocoa and Vanilla Bunny Cookies, a GF variety.

Walking around the store, we managed to fill an entire shopping cart with two weeks worth of food.

When you have a GF affair at a grocery store, I'm guessing that's the point.

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