Quote Originally Posted by Honest Tiefling View Post
Are you in the states? Because I'm heavily gluten-intolerant and it is VERY sneaky on this continent, as shared equipment basically rules out a lot of things for me. We should compare notes to see which wins.

Hell, Kellogs currently has a recipe on their website for a gluten-free dessert that is anything but.
Yes, I'm in the USA.

Well, to be truly pedantic, I was talking about allergens rather than all intolerance triggers. Wheat allergy is a thing, but most people who need to avoid gluten are doing so for reasons of non-allergic intolerances. (Do we have a color-code for excessive pedantry? I feel this paragraph needs one.)

That, or I'm actually not sure which is harder. Both suffer from the problems of "clueless people not realizing that the thing is in the thing" pretty badly, but I think a higher percentage of things that contain gluten do so in an "obvious" way than things containing soy, at least in the American diet. Both of them also have a ton of places they're included sneakily, but there are more dishes where wheat is featured as an intentional ingredient than soy, which is almost always not the featured food in the dish.

Like, if I'm trying to figure out which things don't have gluten, I don't even need to read the labels on a random package of cookies - if it doesn't say gluten free in big letters on the front, it'll totally have gluten in it and there's no need to double-check that assumption by reading the label. With soy, I pretty much have to ask about each individual thing that isn't tofu since it's all equally likely to contain soy and the exceptions are neither obvious nor marketed as such. (I currently have some imported French chocolate-dipped butter cookies made with sunflower lecithin, but the only reason I have them is because I keep reading labels on everything for that one time out of 50 or 100 that I'll actually be able to eat the thing.)

On the other hand, since gluten doesn't have to be called out (as opposed to wheat or whatever other gluten-containing grain being called out by name) and cross-contamination is a bigger issue, there's a whole separate set of problems there. On an additional hand, at least there is a large enough market for gluten free foods that you can find things called out as specifically for that, which does not seem to be a thing with soy-free foods.

On the whole, I am envious of a college friend of mine. Her only food allergy is to pork. At least two different religions specifically don't eat that, plus vegetarians don't either. It still limits her food choices, but she has a much, much easier time than I do in finding safe food.