Technically, yes. We love hempmilk for its taste and nutrition, but I was concerned that my son liked it a bit *too* much, so I checked with Living Harvest.
Here is the information I received from the company on 3/24/08:
"Living Harvest does not use any ingredients that contain gluten. Our Hempmilk products, which are manufactured in the US, are produced on non-dedicated equipment which are subjected to a complete FDA, Organic and Kosher sterilization that guarantees the absence of foreign particles. Our milk products are tested with a result of less than 3 PPM gluten. This is done with the Alissa [ELISA] test and is the lowest any test can go in evaluating gluten content. The current FDA guidelines for 'gluten-free' labeling is less than 20 PPM [parts per million]"
Upon further questioning, I learned that Living Harvest has only done the ELISA test once, and that's when they got the <3 PPM result. She said she would try to find out if future plans were to do more regular testing. I will post her response here when I get it.
Note, however, that people have questioned the GF-ness of this product. Some have noted issues with the chocolate flavor but not with the original flavor. Some with celiac disease have eliminated hemp milk for a couple of weeks then re-introduced it and had no reactions.
I suggest trying hempmilk because it's got a ton of great nutrition, including calcium, protein, and omegas. But if you start noticing a regression in your child (or yourself) or if you see other weird reactions, you could stop the hempmilk for a couple of weeks then re-introduce it and see what happens. It could be, for example, that hemp is not tolerated, but since it's a relatively unique food ingredient, it might not show up on food intolerance tests.
Hope this helps!
UPDATE - UPDATE - UPDATE
On July 10, 2008, I learned from Living Harvest that their hempmilk is produced on shared lines with soy beverages and rice beverages. Click HERE for my Cross Contamination Alert.
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3 comments:
I just found your blog and really, really appreciate your advice, insight and recipes...and upbeat attitude! Thank you! I am definitely checking this regularly.
Hemp milk is full of Omega 6's. A lot of processed food, grain fed meat and plant oils are full of Omega 6's. Typical American grain based diets are deficient in Omega 3's which are brain enhancing (DHA/EPA in fish oil) and anti inflammatory. If you overload on yet another thing containing Omega 6's (Hemp Milk) it's not such a healthy food. My son (who has celiac and can't tolerate Rice Dreams because it is made with Barley) was sensitive to Hemp Milk because it had too many Omega 6's not because it had gluten.
Dear "whattofeedyourkids/ourglutenfreefamily" -- I don't know if you will ever see this, but thanks so much for your post about this! I'm going to post it on the GFCFKids yahoo group, if that's okay, because many people have questions about the Living Harvest hempmilk, and some are starting to think it may have something to do with the EFAs. This is very helpful, thank you!!!! --Tori :)
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