Gluten-free product has twice the protein of regular oats, plant's owner says

It's 14 degrees in the Montana Gluten-Free Processors warehouse. The morning cups of coffee resting on the counter are quickly losing steam as everyone's attention turns toward a hopper spitting oats into brown 50-pound bags.

This is where the real heat is, say Dean Miller and Bruce Wright, gesturing at an ever-growing stack of bagged PrOatina. The gluten-free food market is hot, and PrOatina could be southwest Montana's inroad.

"All oats are gluten-free," Miller said. "But these oats have twice as much protein as regular oats."

Wright, who likes a hot bowl of PrOatina for breakfast, said the more common Quaker Oats taste like cardboard by comparison.

Montana is earning a reputation for creating gluten-free flours sought by people with disorders like celiac disease, which is associated with intolerance to gluten and untreated can result in permanent intestinal damage and severe malnutrition.

More than 3 million Americans are thought to suffer from the disease, which makes products containing even minimal amounts of wheat, barley and rye off limits. And wheat is in practically everything, added to french fries to give them a crispier coat, folded into candy, blended into soup as an easy thickener. Even beer, derived from barley, can give someone with celiac disease severe intestinal troubles.

An even larger segment of the population self-identifies as being wheat sensitive, which has farmers willing to experiment with gluten-free crops excited. They've made flour out of timothy and native Indian rice grass, which like PrOatina, are alternative crops spawned by Montana State University. What they haven't done yet is find a big market success.

But their timing with PrOatina seems to be good. The gluten-free food market of late is sizzling, said Liz Sloan, whose Sloan Trends and Solutions consulting firm is a leading tracker of national and global food trends. She's seen sales of gluten-free products soar from $396 million in 2005 to a projected $1.7 billion in 2010.

Anheuser-Busch now markets a gluten-free beer, Redbridge, made from an African cereal grass, sorghum. General Mills has retooled its production of Rice Chex cereal, making sure naturally gluten-free rice isn't picking up gluten through incidental contact with wheat products during manufacturing. There's also a gluten-free labeling craze, sparked by a federal Food and Drug Administration recognition in mid-decade that wheat is something to which people might be allergic.

The FDA now requires food companies to list wheat on product ingredient labels. Consequently, some products that were always wheat-free now sport gluten-free labeling.

A rise in the recognition of celiac disease is part of the gluten-free trend, Sloan said. In general, households with one person on a restricted diet are likely to impose that diet on everyone, which amplifies the market affects of a disease like celiac, which statistically is found in one in 133 people.

But the bigger factor driving sales of gluten-free products is the gluten-sensitive demographic, that is, people who because of self-diagnosis or a physician's recommendation identify gluten as something to avoid. That segment of the population has soared in recent years as the social media implicate gluten with ailments from autism to malnutrition. Avoiding gluten has become trendy, but trends don't last forever, Sloan said.

"If you have celiac disease, you're pretty sick, let's face it," Sloan said. "But the real broad group is gluten sensitivity, which has become a huge trend. This whole idea of sensitivities has gone through the roof. We've got sensitive hair, sensitive teeth."

Consumers, particularly those between ages 18 and 24, tend to treat their perceived sensitivities with food. It's the same group that reaches for caffeine shots at the convenience store counter, or energy vitamins or immunity beverages. Eventually, those consumers move on, Sloan said.

Celiac disease organizations see undiagnosed victims of their condition within the gluten-sensitive population. When Jean Powell was diagnosed with celiac disease in 1990, the condition was thought to be extremely rare, a one-in-10,000 occurrence in North America. She was one of only seven known cases in Montana. Powell, of Bozeman, said doctors were reluctant to make a celiac diagnosis; she was initially diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Severe malnutrition had cost her feeling in her limbs.

Now, there's a blood test for celiac disease and a new generation of doctors are open to the diagnosis, she said, though the disease still gets missed.

"The younger doctors are very open," said Powell, 73. "The older guys are stubborn. I know a number of people whose doctors tell them they have irritable bowel syndrome (or IBS). IBS means there's something wrong with you, but we don't know what it is."

The surge in gluten-free products is noticeable, Powell said. She finds products easily at health food stores, but she's also seeing more gluten-free merchandise at her local Safeway.

The gold standard for gluten-free certification is a GF printed in a circle. The logo is issued by the Gluten Intolerance Group of North America. The group includes people with celiac disease and also Dermatitis Herpetiformis, a hereditary, autoimmune gluten intolerance disease that produces watery, pimple-like blisters.

GIG has already certified PrOatina oat products, as well as Timtana flour, a Great Northern product made from timothy. It's also certified Montana Monster Munchies gluten-free cookies.

PrOatina isn't the first gluten-free oat flour to hit the market, said Cynthia Kupper, GIG's executive director. Her group has certified a few oat flours, as well as flour made from garbanzo beans, tapioca and rice, to name a few. Gluten is what gives wheat flour its binding quality, so alternative flours without gluten need an additive like xanthan gum or carrageenan.

Her advice to the PrOatina producers is to broaden their market. Producers who don't, usually don't last.

"What happens is they restrict their market to the celiac community and I keep telling them they have to go beyond that," Kupper said.

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Information from: Billings Gazette, http://www.billingsgazette.com