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Hope y’all had a wonderful, relaxing, healthy Labor Day Weekend! Guess that officially means that the summer is over… Looking at the bright side of things – which we at Custom Choice Cereal always prefer – football season is back on. And that’s always a great thing  But back to the “really” important things in life…
 Today is once again the first Wednesday of of the month aka Dr. Wangen Wednesday! This means that our friend and advisor Dr. Stephen Wangen answers any question you might have about celiac disease, gluten intolerance and living gluten-free!
Suffering from celiac disease himself, Stephen understands the challenges of a gluten-free diet from both a personal and professional experience. Most importantly, he is very passionate about helping others like you. This passion was a call that he answered by co-founding The IBS Treatment Center in Seattle, WA, blogging as The Gluten Free Doctor, and serving on the Board of Trustees for the Gluten Intolerance Group of North America. We invite you to read more about Stephen and his books in our introduction to our advisors.
Dr. Wangen is going out of his way to provide this wonderful service, and we appreciate your understanding that out of respect for Dr. Wangen and his time we have to limit each session to 5 questions on a first-come, first-served basis. Please join us at Custom Choice Cereal in thanking Stephen for taking the time off his busy schedule to address your questions.
Asking what YOU want to know is easy and can be done in just 4 simple steps:
- Post your question as a comment to this blog entry
- We send all questions to Dr. Wangen
- Dr. Wangen answers and we publish what he says in reply to your comments
- Check back for the answer to your question a few days later or simply subscribe to our blog
Don’t be shy – there are no “dumb questions” except for those you don’t ask  Besides, we learn a whole lot from what you want to know every month and are curious to see your questions!
 We hope all of you enjoyed the long 4th of July weekend with the four “F”: family, friends, fun and some great gluten-free food!
Having entered the second half of 2011, we at Custom Choice Cereal continue the good tradition of making the first Wednesday of each month known as Dr. Wangen Wednesday. On this special day, our good friend and outstanding advisor Dr. Stephen Wangen answers any question you might have about celiac disease, gluten intolerance and happily living gluten-free!
Stephen has an amazing understanding of the challenges that a gluten-free diet brings with it from personal experience since he suffers from celiac himself. More importantly, he is very passionate about helping others. This passion was a call that he answered by making it his professional career, co-founding The IBS Treatment Center in Seattle, WA, blogging as The Gluten Free Doctor, and serving on the Board of Trustees for the Gluten Intolerance Group of North America. We invite you to read more about Stephen and his books in our introduction to our advisors.
Dr. Wangen is going out of his way to provide this wonderful service, and we appreciate your understanding that out of respect for Dr. Wangen and his time we have to limit each session to 5 questions on a first-come, first-served basis. We therefore kindly ask you to check how many comments have already been posted before adding yours. For now, please join us at Custom Choice Cereal in thanking Stephen for taking the time off his busy schedule to address your questions!
Asking what YOU want to know is easy and can be done in just 4 simple steps:
- Post your question as a comment to this blog entry
- We send all questions to Dr. Wangen
- Dr. Wangen answers and we publish what he says in reply to your comments
- Check back for the answer to your question a few days later or simply subscribe to our blog
We are looking forward to another informative and insightful gluten-free Q&A session and can’t wait to read your questions. There is so much we learn from you, so we are extremely excited about this rare but wonderful occasion where everybody wins!
Today is not only the first day of a new month (can you believe it’s JUNE already??) but also the first Wednesday of of the month! As some of you already know – and more of you hopefully find out – we at Custom Choice Cereal do our best to make this day also known as Dr. Wangen Wednesday because our friend and advisor Dr. Stephen Wangen answers any question you might have about celiac disease, gluten intolerance and living gluten-free!
Suffering from celiac disease himself, Stephen understands the challenges of a gluten-free diet from both a personal and professional experience. Most importantly, he is very passionate about helping others like you. This passion was a call that he answered by co-founding The IBS Treatment Center in Seattle, WA, blogging as The Gluten Free Doctor, and serving on the Board of Trustees for the Gluten Intolerance Group of North America. We invite you to read more about Stephen and his books in our introduction to our advisors.
Dr. Wangen is going out of his way to provide this wonderful service, and we appreciate your understanding that out of respect for Dr. Wangen and his time we have to limit each session to 5 questions on a first-come, first-served basis. Please join us at Custom Choice Cereal in thanking Stephen for taking the time off his busy schedule to address your questions.
Asking what YOU want to know is easy and can be done in just 4 simple steps:
- Post your question as a comment to this blog entry
- We send all questions to Dr. Wangen
- Dr. Wangen answers and we publish what he says in reply to your comments
- Check back for the answer to your question a few days later or simply subscribe to our blog
Don’t be shy – there are no “dumb questions” except for those you don’t ask Besides, we learn a whole lot from what you want to know every month and are curious to see your questions!
If you’ve come to our blog you most likely know that we want to make living gluten-free a fun and enjoyable experience. Besides offering you the largest variety of custom gluten-free cereal (over 2.5 billion combination possibilities anyone?!), we at Custom Choice Cereal also see it as part of our mission to raise awareness for celiac disease and gluten intolerance. And since it’s Celiac Awareness Month, we figured we highlight one of the great resources for the gluten-free community (this and more can be found in the left sidebar).
Suffering for many years and unsuccessfully consulting 22 physicians until number 23 (!) finally diagnosed her with a rare autoimmune disease called celiac disease, Alice Bast founded the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness (NFCA) in 2003 out of “the desire to spare other families from needless heartache and suffering” that she went through. As a national 501(c)(3) not-for-profit, it is the organization’s goal to raise awareness for celiac disease among the general public and the healthcare community. In addition, the NFCA aims to facilitates research to better understand the causes, mechanisms, and treatment of celiac disease. After all she has accomplished with her organization, Hajo was understandably thrilled to personally meet Alice at the Gluten-Free Labeling Summit in Washington, DC, last week.
Not only is everyone on the the NFCA’s team a great advocate for increased gluten-free food safety, the organization and its website are also outstanding resources for the newly diagnosed as well as support group leaders and celiac “veterans”. What we consider some of the most useful features are the printable guides, including a celiac disease symptoms checklist, celiac disease and women’s health, several great documents on restoring health after diagnosis and helpful advice to manage everyday gluten-free living. We frequently check their website for updates on the gluten-free industry and new research and highly recommend you join the NFCA’s mailing list.
Have you visited the NFCA’s website before? Maybe you let us know what you found most helpful or interesting? We can’t mention everything on this awesome website but we certainly are always eager to learn!
Puuuh. Now this was a week of intense travel for me representing Custom Choice Cereal! It all started with the Charlotte Gluten-Free Expo last Saturday, which was truly awesome and great fun.
This week then continued with the long anticipated Gluten-Free Labeling Summit in Washington, DC, where the world’s largest gluten-free cake was assembled to raise awareness for the lack of clear standards in gluten-free product labeling. The FDA was also there, and I think the mission to make them aware how important food safety is for people who suffer from celiac disease or gluten intolerance was accomplished. We at Custom Choice Cereal are so proud to have donated to this much needed and wonderful event!
It was awesome to see friends from the community such as Jules Shepard, Nancy Ginter from the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness (NFCA), and Tinsley Meloy from Celiebo again. On top of that, I finally also had the chance to meet 1in133.org co-initiator John Forberger, Jill Brack from Glow Gluten Free, Dr. Alessio Fasano from the Maryland University’s Center for Celiac Research, the NFCA’s founder Alice Bast, and many more. Everyone was excited to be there, and watching the cake grow to 11 feet and 2 inches (!!) throughout the day was great fun!
You can watch a video of the cake being built on the Custom Choice Cereal facebook page. And I am just wondering: when was the last time you needed ladders to build a cake?!?
Yesterday, I finished my travel-intense week with a sweet “little” 586 mile trip from DC to Wilmington, NC, to speak to a local celiac disease support group. I always love meeting people in those groups! This one was a particular joy though because it was local for us in North Carolina. Not so local was the 9.5 hour drive DC-Wilmington-Chapel Hill… But at least it was a gorgeous day, and meeting others in the celiac community is what I love most about my job. Hope all of you have a wonderful weekend!
It’s a big day for the gluten-free community: the gluten-free labeling summit will take place in DC today AND it’s the first Wednesday of Celiac Awareness Month! For this reason we are particularly thrilled let you know that first monthly Wednesdays are (at least here) also known as Dr. Wangen Wednesdays because Custom Choice Cereal’s friend and advisor Dr. Stephen Wangen answers your questions about celiac disease, gluten intolerance and living gluten-free.
Suffering from celiac disease himself, Stephen understands the challenges of a gluten-free diet from both a personal and professional experience. Most importantly, he is very passionate about helping others like you. This passion was a call that he answered by co-founding The IBS Treatment Center in Seattle, WA, blogging as The Gluten Free Doctor, and serving on the Board of Trustees for the Gluten Intolerance Group of North America. We invite you to read more about Stephen and his books in our introduction to our advisors.
Dr. Wangen is going out of his way to provide this wonderful service, and we appreciate your understanding that out of respect for Dr. Wangen and his time we have to limit each session to 5 questions on a first-come, first-served basis. Please join us at Custom Choice Cereal in thanking Stephen for taking the time off his busy schedule to address your questions.
Asking what YOU want to know is easy and can be done in just 4 simple steps:
- Post your question as a comment to this blog entry
- We send all questions to Dr. Wangen
- Dr. Wangen answers and we publish what he says in reply to your comments
- Check back for the answer to your question a few days later or simply subscribe to our blog
Don’t be shy – there are no “dumb questions” except for those you don’t ask Besides, we learn a whole lot from what you want to know every month and are curious to see your questions!
The Custom Choice Cereal team was torn for quite some time because we had to make a very difficult decision for last weekend: attend the gluten-free expo in Asheville, the one in Charlotte, or the one in Chicago? We had a great time in Chicago last year and also enjoyed the Ingles Gluten-Free Fair 2010 in Asheville. After long discussions we therefore said to ourselves: “Why not try something new and go to Charlotte?” And so we did.
When we entered the venue of the Charlotte Gluten-Free Expo at 9am we were welcomed by a buzz that really transformed us into fair mode! The aisle to the main vendor room was lined with stands, and plenty of people already poured in to listen to gluten-free research superstar Dr. Alessio Fasano from the Celiac Disease Research Center at the University of Maryland. Later on there also was a chance to take a gluten-free baking class with our good friend Jules Shepard – who welcomed us at the first stand when entering the main room.
The vendor room itself was PACKED even before the doors openend! We were truly amazed at the variety of gluten-free manufacturers that were there. Of course we saw most of the big names. However, it was awesome to see quite a few smaller local companies (like us) such as Tasty-Yo (frozen yogurt that is simply delicious in combination with our custom cereal), Polka Dot Bake Shop, Labrems Cookies and gluten-free pizza from FUEL serving the gluten-free community. These last guys have a store right around the corner from the expo and sampled an incredible 82 (!!) boxes of pizza!
Once the doors opened, we were super busy until the very end of the expo! It was so much fun to finally put some faces on the names of people we know as frequent customers of our custom gluten-free cereal or have just emailed with. Fortunately we had learned from our previous expo experiences and brought plenty of water to drink. Trust us when we say that your throat will get dry and sore after 5 hours of talking… People were amazed to learn that they can create their perfect gluten-free cereal online. They loved the fact that they can even name their personal mix and receive it conveniently at their doorstep. Fortunately we had brought exactly the right amount of samples so that at the end of the day we just ran out. After receiving a comment on our facebook page (where you can also see more pictures of the event) today we know why: 1,137 hungry attendees!!
Let us finish with a great advice that we learned from a few veteran expo visitors: bring tupperware boxes and/or ziplog bags for samples to take home! That way you don’t miss out on all the great foods because you’re too full after you made your way only through half the vendors
We at Custom Choice Cereal had a pretty turbulent week. Lots of new things have been going on in-house that will be revealed in due time. At the same time we had to deal with severe weather warnings for several days after last week’s devastating tornadoes in North Carolina. On top of all that, the gluten-free community has been busy creating a buzz around the 2011 Gluten-Free Labeling Summit in Washington, DC. We wrote about this great effort to push for a national gluten-free labeling standard in the US before. Just five days short of the event on May 4th, we’re super excited to bring you an interview with our good friend Jules Shepard, gluten-free supertstar, baker of delicious gluten-free goods and co-initiator of this “Big Deal”.
 Question: What does 1in133.org stand for? How can people get involved?
Answer: 1in133 stands for the number of people we know to have celiac disease. We suspect that this number is actually now higher, but that statistic is the one everyone recognizes as representing the number of people with celiac disease. We are also representing the 18 million people in the US with gluten sensitivity, and anyone else eating gluten-free for health reasons.
Anyone can get involved by going to the website and signing the petition. The more people who sign, the louder our collective voice, so tell everyone you know to sign too! There is also an opportunity to contribute financially to the cause at that same link. We have also set up a Facebook Causes page, which allows you to give some time, and the American Celiac Disease Alliance (our chosen 501-c) receives donations from your time.
Question: Who are the faces behind 1in133.org? How did this “alliance” form?
Answer: We are but two people: Jules Shepard and John Forberger. We both have celiac disease and have suffered from gluten-contaminated, mislabeled foods. We wanted to do something to get the FDA’s and Congress’ attention and force them to act to protect us all with uniform federal gluten-free labeling regulations.
Question: What prompted you to launch 1in133.org? Was there a specific incident?
Answer: John was sickened by gluten again in the Fall of 2010, and was hospitalized for 14 days. We were talking over the incident and were moved to stop waiting for FDA to “get around” to completing the labeling regulations Congress ordered it to have done by 2008.
Question: What exactly is it that you want to achieve with 1in133.org and specifically the event on May 4th?
Answer: We want to draw attention to our cause, our need, and our numbers. The World’s Tallest Gluten-Free Cake is certainly an attention-getter, and it’s raised enough eyebrows already that we’ve gotten nearly 6,000 on-line petition signatures in only a few short weeks! We want to force the FDA to establish a federal gluten-free labeling standard, and we’d like to push Congress for more protections as well.
Question: Where exactly will the “show-down” on May 4th take place?
Answer: At the Embassy Suites Convention Center in Washington, DC.
Question: Who will be invited to the event? Can you already mention specific names?
Answer: All listed Advocates, Cake Builders and Sponsors, as well as many members of Congress and the FDA. In addition, gluten-free community and manufacturing industry leaders will be in attendance, but the event is open to the public as well.
Question: How did you come up with the idea to create the world’s largest gluten-free cake?
Answer: John challenged me to build the World’s Largest GF Cookie, but I said that was too silly, because it would only be as large as the largest oven we could find. So I suggested cake!
Question: How big will the cake actually be? How much ingredients will you use for it?
Answer: The cake itself will be around 13 feet tall, and then set on 24 inch risers, so approximately 15 feet tall! It will weigh around 1900 pounds! Something on the order of 180 pounds of gluten-free flour were used and we’ll be using 700 pounds of frosting!
Question: What are the logistics of the actual baking like? Will the cake be actually baked on site or will you assemble the pieces?
Answer: The cakes (as you now know first-hand!) were baked at the Whole Foods Gluten-Free Bakehouse in NC by my good friend Lee Tobin and his awesome GF team there. They have been frozen and shipped by Whole Foods to their warehouse in Maryland and will be delivered to the site prior to the event for us to start building!
Question: Is there anything else you’d like us our readers to know?
Answer: Please tell everyone you know to sign our petition. It only takes a moment, but it will and is making a difference! Speaking with one collective, very loud voice, we will be heard and we will have federal gluten-free food labeling regulations! The more attention we can draw to this cause, the more the FDA and Congress will have to listen and to answer.
Thank you so much for all the info, Jules. We look forward to seeing you tomorrow at the Charlotte Gluten-Free Expo and on Wednesday in DC!
 The Custom Choice Cereal team had the luxury to tour the Whole Foods Gluten-Free Bakehouse yesterday evening. Fortunately for us it is located right around the corner just 15 miles from our own office here in in North Carolina. It was pretty awesome to see the operation that is producing so many great gluten-free goodies for us. Organized by the Raleigh CSA support group (Thank you Patricia!), roughly 30 people took advantage of the opportunity to catch a glimpse behind the scenes of how Whole Foods makes its gluten-free baked goods.
After all of us had been equipped with very fashionable hair nets we were admitted to the actual warehouse – and welcomed by Lee Tobin who had prepared two sampling tables with about 30 gluten-free goodies to try. Everything was really good but favorites were the Light White Bread that was even un-toasted not distinguishable from regular bread and the almond cookies. Lee also shared a pretty funny story about the bread: the size of the bread increased over time (that’s a good thing!) so the original bag they used to package it in became too small. The solution? They now package it in a larger bag first, then cool it down, and only after that fit it into the original bag. You’ll see that it packaged in two bags if you buy it. We also caught a pretty lucky time to visit because crew was busy baking the world’s largest gluten-free cake for the Gluten-Free Food Labeling Summit. You can see that Lee is wearing the t-shirt – the first pink t-shirt he wore since the 1980s – for the event on May 4th in Washington, DC.
 During the tour, we learned that the bakehouse is a dedicated gluten-free and thus also wheat-free facility. Whole Foods does have a couple of baked goods containing nuts, soy, eggs and milk. They do however have a very strict policy and clean all utensils, bowls and machines between baking batches of goods with a certain allergen and those without or with different allergens. It was very re-assuring to see and hear! At the same time, they test a sample of every batch of incoming ingredients as well as a sample of every batch of outgoing product for potential gluten contamination. In the cold storage room, Whole Foods also keeps all allergen-free ingredients on one side and any ingredient containing eggs, milks, nuts or soy on the other side. It’s those little differences that really count!
We also learned that being a batter mixer is physically quite a demanding job. Imagine mixing 20-24 huge bowls of around 200lb of batter per day – and lifting two 50lb bags of ingredients per batch. Do the math and you’ll see that you would lift at least 2,000lb of ingredients! All of the great baked gluten-free goods that you buy at Whole Foods across the country have been baked in one of their four industrial ovens. They keep them running around the clock, and it was pretty impressive to see those machines in action. Since the facility tour followed the path of production, we also saw the packaging area, the huge freezer they are so proud of, and the really really big warehouse. Fortunately for us is, we passed by the sampling table one more time on our way out ☺
Is there any gluten-free baked good that you would like Whole Foods to create? As we learned it takes an impressive average of around 100 test runs (of 200lb of batter) until a new product can be produced for the market, so don’t wait any longer and leave a comment now!
 Yesterday was a very interesting day for Custom Choice Cereal. I had the great opportunity to return to UNC – always a pleasure but especially after Harrison Barnes announced his return to the Tar Heels for another year – to listen to and learn from two student teams who analyzed Custom Choice Cereal over the past months.
The previous sentence already included an important piece of valuable information – listen & learn. Quite honestly, there is rarely a day that passes without finding out something that I didn’t know before. I truly believe that this is one of the great benefits of being an entrepreneur. However, it also requires you to be open-minded and receptive to what others have to say – and yes, that isn’t always easy and can even be uncomfortable if they are not saying what you want to hear but what you need to hear.
What really prompted me to share a few of my entrepreneurial “lessons learned” are two things though. First, I am quite honestly a little fed up with people who over-promise and under-deliver. It should be the other way around, folks! At the very least in the long term it will definitely come around and bite you in the rear end because you will develop a reputation for this kind of behavior. It is perfectly acceptable to say “No” before you bite off more than you can chew!
Borrowing from American History X, I’d like to end this blog entry like every good paper with a quote because “someone else has already said it best. So if you can’t top it, steal from them and go out strong.” I picked a quote from John Ruskin that a very successful local entrepreneur keeps in his email footer and that has impressed me quite a bit. I believe is key for any entrepreneurial activity because it puts the correlation between risk and return in a startup context:
“It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money … that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot. It can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that … you will have enough to pay for something better.”
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Gluten-free Cereal Cerealize your Gluten Freedom! Our blog serves to share all things gluten-free and give you the occasional update on what's happening at Custom Choice Cereal.
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