Gluten Free in Japan

How many years have you resided in Japan?

What is your bakery/farm’s approach to offering food for those with cd/gs? What does your bakery/farm offer?

All of our products are strictly gluten free out of necessity (to keep me healthy) but they are also developed to be so good that people without food allergies will choose our products (this, too is a necessity, though a financial one). We only make products that are better, or at least as good as, the wheaty equivalent. For this reason our menu is limited, but what we do make meets our high standards.

Outside of the gluten free by default nature of our products, we focus on using ingredients we grow on the farm. Homegrown rice flour, black soybeans and eggs are the backbone of our packaged goods, and our fresh goods vary by the seasons according to what is coming out of the garden. We choose our other ingredients carefully and don’t add colorings, flavorings or preservatives to our foods.

Our primary far-wandering packaged products right now are brownies. You can find our chocolate brownies and kurokinako brownies (very dark roasted black soybean powder stands in for the cocoa powder) and rusks in Tokyo and Osaka. Our rice flour is also available in the Tokyo area. Here in Okayama our brownies are in a number of shops around the prefecture and most weekends will find us at various farmers’ markets with brownies, baked custard, donuts, chicken and vegetable tempura, quiche, merengue cookies, cream puffs and starting this fall, a line of puffed brown rice (pongashi) goodies ranging from the usual sweet snack to spicy brown rice and beans snacks. Everything we make is absolutely gluten free, with no gluten-y foods allowed in the bakery at all, and much is dairy-free, though of course the facility also processes dairy.

How do you think Japan can become more friendly for those with celiac disease/gluten sensitivity?

In my experience, the level of awareness about food allergies within Japan in general is alarmingly low (of course I know that celiac disease and gluten sensitivity are not quite the same thing as food allergies medically, but from an awareness standpoint, I think they stand together). I personally think this is something that ought to be addressed in schools, as with the prevalence of school lunches and cooking classes in elementary school there is ample opportunity, and as food allergies are most common (and rising)  among children, the need is there. Beyond that, I’d like to see regulations requiring “shared equipment” and “shared facility” statements. Without that it is very difficult to determine the risk of any given food being contaminated, and it is very easy to imagine such oversights going unnoticed by people buying food for themselves and by chefs preparing foods for people with allergies.