Why I use a specialised AI tool for gluten free and travel planning

Posted on June 17, 2026 by Jo

There’s a moment most restriction travellers know well. You’re standing in front of the breakfast buffet at a hotel in Queenstown, plate in hand, and you genuinely don’t know what’s safe. Or you’re at home planning that trip through the Loire Valley and three hours of Googling later you’re less certain than when you started. AI tools promised to fix that. And they do help, just not always in the way you need.

Think of it this way. A generalist AI, like ChatGPT or Claude, is like a knowledgeable librarian, they can point you in the right direction, give you solid general information, and they’re genuinely useful. A specialised tool built around your specific restrictions is more like a travel consultant who’s actually travelled your way, they don’t just brief you, they send you off with everything you need in your hand. Personally I use both, and I’ll show you exactly where the difference shows up, because for some trips, the librarian is all you need.

What standard AI actually does well

Ask ChatGPT about travelling to Paris with an egg allergy and it’ll tell you about French food law, flag that eggs turn up in places you wouldn’t expect like béarnaise and brioche, give you phrases to use, and suggest some smart cultural workarounds like leaning into North African and Vietnamese restaurants. That’s genuinely useful. It even thought to ask about severity. Google’s AI overview, powered by Gemini, goes further in some areas, it names specific supermarkets like Monoprix and Naturalia, flags the EpiPen and doctor’s letter angle for severe allergies, and even catches that steak-frites ordered à cheval comes with a fried egg on top. If you’re heading somewhere well documented, travelling with a single common restriction, and you’re comfortable doing a bit of your own follow up research, a generalist AI will get you a long way.

And if you didn’t open ChatGPT, but instead Googled it and read the AI overview at the top of the results, and yes we all do this, that’s not a bad starting point.

There’s one catch with the Google AI overview in particular. It’s only as good as what ranks well in search, and most of what ranks well is written for single restriction travellers. If you’re managing more than one restriction, and a lot of us are, the results start to get complicated fast. Something flagged as a safe egg free option might be full of gluten. A vegan restaurant recommended for egg allergy might use oat milk in everything. The overview doesn’t know your combination, it knows the most common question. This isn’t just an AI problem by the way. Anyone who’s followed a gluten free recommendation to a crêperie and then discovered the dairy free part wasn’t even considered will know exactly what I mean.

Example one: At the breakfast buffet

So where does it get complicated? Not in what these tools know, but in what they do with it once you’re actually there, standing in front of a decision that needs a practical answer, not a briefing.

Take this plate. I was staying at a Toyoko Inn in Japan and asked ChatGPT whether this breakfast was safe for someone who is gluten free and dairy free. The staff were busy and I wasn’t sure if it was ok to ask.

The response was reasonable. It flagged the right risks, the possible soy glaze on the fish, the eggs potentially cooked with butter or milk, the mystery sauce. It gave me a confidence rating of 7-8 out of 10 for gluten free and 5-6 out of 10 for dairy free. Then it asked me three follow-up questions before it would go further.

A confidence rating is not much use when you’re hungry and the buffet is closing in twenty minutes.

I asked my own tool, the product sutability checker the same question. It also flagged the right risks, and it also asked a follow up question to confirm my restrictions. But then it gave me the specific Japanese phrases to ask about each dish on the plate, a ready to show card for staff, and safer default choices if I couldn’t get a clear answer. It’s built to err on the side of caution, which means it won’t give you a green light until it has enough information to be confident. For coeliac level restrictions that’s not a limitation, it’s the point.

One response you read, the other you take to the buffet, this time with the confidence to know what to ask the staff.

Output from a Chat GPT conversation whether breakfast is GF DF
The output from a conversation if a meal is GF DF in Japan

Example two: Planning at home

Now take a different moment, not standing at a buffet, but at home planning a trip. I asked ChatGPT and Gemini the same question: “I’m allergic to eggs and travelling to Paris for a city break, what do I need to know?”

Both did well. ChatGPT flagged the right foods, gave useful phrases, and suggested leaning into North African and Vietnamese restaurants as a smart workaround. Gemini named specific supermarkets, caught the à cheval steak frites detail, and covered emergency preparation more thoroughly than ChatGPT did. Between them you’d have a solid understanding of the landscape.

But here’s what you wouldn’t have. You wouldn’t have the specific French labelling words to scan a menu yourself. You wouldn’t have named restaurants with neighbourhoods. You wouldn’t have a bilingual allergy card ready to show staff. You wouldn’t have links to French government labelling resources or the local allergy association. And you wouldn’t have a fallback plan for when things go wrong mid trip, because things do go wrong mid trip.

My tool returned all of that from a single clarifying question about whether I had any other restrictions.

ChatGPT to its credit ended with three more questions before it would go deeper. Gemini ended with “tell me your neighbourhood and favourite foods.” Both are useful but if you close the tab at that point, which most people do, what you’re left with is a briefing, what you need is a kit.

Chat GPT output for a traveller allergic to eggs going to Paris
Gemini output for a traveller allergic to eggs going to Paris
Globally Sauced Essentials output for a traveller allergic to eggs going to Paris

If you need to go deeper on specific restaurant recommendations for a destination, I’ve built a separate tool entirely, a dining guide built just for that, it even checks if a restaurant is still operating. While the menu checker i perfect for deciphering a menu to understand what’s in a meal. The essentials pack is designed to give you a detailed overview across every category, while the dining guide or menu checker is where I go when I want to drill down further.

Why this happens

So why does this happen? It’s not that ChatGPT or Gemini are getting it wrong. It’s that they’re built to be helpful to everyone, which means they’re optimised for nobody in particular. They don’t know your specific combination of restrictions, your risk tolerance, or that you’re standing at a Toyoko Inn buffet at 7am trying to figure out if the eggs are safe. They give you the most useful answer they can for the most common version of your question.

A tool built specifically for restriction travel starts from a different place. The cultural context, the safety-first mindset, the multi-restriction framing, the “here’s what to actually do right now” output, that’s all baked in before you ask your first question. You don’t need to know what to ask, which matters more than it sounds. If you knew exactly what to ask, you probably wouldn’t need the tool.

There’s one more thing worth being upfront about. If you asked ChatGPT or Gemini the same question twice, you might get a different answer. Generalist AI is designed to be conversational and varied, which is great for a lot of things but less reassuring when you’re trying to make a safety call. I ran the same meal check twice for this post and got noticeably different responses. A tool with a fixed prompt structure covers the same categories every time, the wording might shift slightly but the framework doesn’t.

The other difference is that my tool is deliberately cautious. It won’t give you a green light until it has enough information to be confident. For some people that feels slow. For anyone who’s been glutened by a “probably fine” call, it feels exactly right.

That moment at the breakfast buffet in Queenstown, or the three hours of planning for the Loire Valley that left you less certain than when you started, that’s what this is all about. Not replacing the research, but making sure that when you close the tab you’re holding something useful. A kit, not just a briefing. If a generalist AI gets you there, brilliant. If you’ve ever closed a tab and still felt unsure or that it was still too much work, it might be worth trying something built specifically for your needs and how you travel.

Jo is the founder of Globally Sauced, a travel platform for dietary restricted travellers and is gluten and dairy free. When not outdoors or travelling, she loves to empower people with dietary restrictions so they can explore the world safely.

Globally Sauced offers verified restaurant recommendations, country-specific guides, food label / menu translations, and more downloadable resources for gluten-free, dairy-free, allergy-conscious and other dietary restricted travellers. Learn more at globallysauced.com

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How to Travel Off the Beaten Path with Dietary Restrictions (Without Surviving on Snacks)

Posted on June 3, 2026 by Jo

Most dietary restriction travel advice is written for people staying in big cities. Book a hotel somewhere with suitable food and a good location, sort a dedicated gluten-free restaurant, use an allergy card, perhaps check the menu online. Done.

That advice is fine, until you decide you actually want to go somewhere. A ski village in the mountains, the thatched roof post town on a scenic railway, a powder-hunting resort an hour from the nearest supermarket. Or even that dream beach holiday somewhere warm. That’s where the standard advice falls apart, and where a bit of extra planning pays off properly.

I’ve been working through the itinerary for my next Japan trip, a twenty-five day northbound snowboarding and sightseeing route through Tohoku and Hokkaido, hitting places like Zao Onsen, the Morioka ski resorts, and Aomori — and the food planning for somewhere like Geto Kogen (a remote powder resort with, frankly, no reliable GF/DF options on mountain) is a completely different conversation to Sapporo, where I’ll be able to eat kaisendon for breakfast and have gluten free ramen and tempura for dinner.

I didn’t want to share an abstract list with you, here’s what actually works, in places where lists don’t exist and Google Maps has three options. Heads up, the examples through here are related to my upcoming and previous trips, but they work just as well whether your going on an idyllic beach holiday, a surf trip, or just want to base yourself in some smaller towns for a while. And if you’re reading this and thinking that trip sounds like me, contact me on social media, I’m happy to share the full plan.

Your accommodation is your safety net

In a city, a bad restaurant is a ten-minute walk from a better one, and yes, even with dietary restrictions there is likely to be more than one option. In a ski village, your accommodation might be the only safe meal going.

The self-catering baseline is lower than you might think. Most hotel rooms anywhere in the world have a fridge. Microwaves are increasingly standard in many places, often in a shared lobby space. A kettle is almost universal. That’s all you need, enough to store food from a supermarket run, heat a backup meal, or rehydrate something you’ve brought. You don’t need a full kitchen, just pack a bowl and some camping cutlery so you’re not looking for something when you’re hangry.

Contact hotels through the booking platform before you are committed to staying. If they offer breakfast or dinner, even for an additional fee, send them a message through the secure messaging system asking whether they can accommodate your restrictions. I did this for every accommodation when I was planning a ski trip to Nagano & Niigata last year, most replied, the ones that didn’t? I used the free cancellation and went elsewhere.

Gluten Free, Dairy Free Japanese breakfast at Hotel Senke in Akakura Onsen

Hotel Senke in Akakura Onsen was one that came through; a lot of places did to be honest but knowing that they could do breakfast, and had an option for dinner was a real lifesaver. A reply telling you they can help is useful information. No reply is also useful information.

Book flexible cancellation where you can, If research tells you there’s genuinely nothing safe within range of a particular lodge, you want the option to move your base. Remote resort areas or rural villages rarely improve once you’re there.

Learn the food landscape before you arrive

Every destination has its own logic, and understanding it in advance means you can make confident calls in the moment rather than stressing at the menu.

What’s naturally safe, and where

In places with strong regional food cultures, and Japan is full of them, some dishes are naturally low-risk for your restrictions if you can ask the right questions. For gluten-free and dairy-free travel in Japan I look for the following (The Essentials Travel Pack is fantastic for generating these options and more)

Sashimi-focused izakayas are usually your best anchor
Yakitori ordered shio (salt, not tare) is a reliable option
100% buckwheat soba (十割そば, jūwari) where you can find it
Onigiri with simple fillings — avoid anything with mayo or soy-seasoned fillings
Yakiniku or grilled meat ask for plain meats and salt

In regional areas, local specialities are often worth researching. Ouchi-juku, a beautifully preserved Edo-period post town on the Yagan Railway, has negi-soba (a regional buckwheat noodle dish) at places serving jūwari soba, plus grilled char on a stick (salted, roasted over charcoal) and tochi-mochi (horse chestnut rice cakes), which are naturally gluten and dairy free, just check the topping. None of these would turn up on a typical GF Japan guide. Finding these was tricky. I ended up looking for jūwari soba (十割そば) on the menu then putting the menu through Google Translate to check.

Gluten free, dairy free local speciality Gohei-mochi in Narai-juku

Hidden ingredients

In Japan, dashi (usually bonito-based fish stock) and soy sauce (which nearly always contains wheat) are the two things that catch people out the most. Both are foundational to Japanese cooking in a way that’s easy to underestimate, they turn up in broths, sauces, marinades, dressings, and things that look like plain vegetables. A dish that reads as naturally simple often isn’t.

Many countries have ingredients that feature heavily in the cuisine, this isn’t isolated to Japan, but knowing this in advance means you know what to ask about, not just what to avoid.

What is the service culture like?

Japan’s service culture is one of the most careful I’ve encountered. Restaurants will often say no if they can’t guarantee safety, which is actually a good thing, even when it’s inconvenient. Two places said no on a night in Kanazawa, and the third, where they said yes, I trusted completely. You learn to read a careful no as more useful than a breezy yes. If you’re headed to Japan read up on Why Japan Handles Food Allergies Differently to the West.

Meanwhile other countries will go out of their way to help, if like me cross contamination is a concern this isn’t ideal if they don’t understand the steps needed to minimise the risk of cross contamination.

That said, remote areas do have fewer options, so “knowing which battles to pick” matters more when you only have a handful of restaurants within reach.

Use the right tools

Translation

For Japan specifically, Papago handles food terminology and cultural nuance better than most general-purpose translators like Google Translate, but something will be better than nothing. It’s worth downloading and learing to use before you go, not after.

They are essential to ask follow up questions to confirm cooking practises or cross contamination risks as well as scanning ingredient labels at convenience stores and supermarkets. Which let’s face it you will be doing when you can’t speak the language fluently, both Papago and Google Translate’s image scanner are great at this.

Learn to use the image scan mode, download the languages you need and create and save some key phrases, before you travel not when you’re standing in a 7-Eleven in a ski village trying to work out if the onigiri has soy in the seasoning. I’ve been known to practise in my local asian grocery store much to the amusement of staff. I do into this more in this post: The Best Translation Apps for Dietary Restrictions and How to use Them.

A physical allergy card

This is non-negotiable for sit-down restaurants, and more so in areas where English is limited. A card you can hand to staff, which they can take to the kitchen, is more reliable than a phone screen in a busy environment and more accurate than spoken communication when nuance matters.

Allergy card and traditional dessert in Kanazawa, Japan

The key things your card needs to cover:

Your specific restrictions (all of them, don’t just list one)
Cross-contamination, not just ingredients
Both what to avoid and what you can eat

If you’re using an AI-generated card, which you can generate here: Free Allergy Card, review it before you travel, I recommended translating it into a third unrelated language, then back into your native language (Thanks for the tip Harry). A native speaker is ideal but often there’s not one of those handy. AI translation is good and getting better, but treating it as a draft to verify rather than a finished product is the right approach.

Structure your itinerary to give yourself easy wins

One of the most useful things you can do when planning a trip that includes genuinely remote areas is to sandwich them between cities where eating is easier.

On a Tohoku run, Sendai and Sapporo are both excellent food cities with plenty of safe options. Sendai in particular earns its place: winter is oyster season at Matsushima, and fresh grilled oysters (seasoned with seawater, nothing added) are naturally GF and DF. Sapporo in January means kaisendon at Nijo Market, soup curry (check the base, but often safe), and Hokkaido crab.

These easy stretches matter because they reduce the cumulative stress of the harder ones. If you know Sapporo is coming up and you trust it, the days at Geto Kogen where you’re living off onigiri feels more manageable rather than grim.

For my upcoming trip my easier locations are: Nikko, Sendai and Sapporo, the harder locations will be Zao Onsen while Aomori, Morioka and Aizuwakamatsu could go either way, I’ve found naturally safe options, the occasional reviewed gluten free offering (most don’t mention dairy free though) and there are convenience stores in all those places. Asking the right questions and using my allergy card will be key.

Consider basing yourself in hubs, For my upcoming trip I’ve also chosen to do more day trips and stay in hubs, for me this looks like staying in Morioka near to the train station and planning day trips to Hachimantai Shimokura, Appi Kogen and Tazawako Kogen as well as some backup ski resorts including Geto Kogen depending on conditions and how I’m feeling. Recently when I was in Adelaide with mum we did the same, stayed for longer somewhere central and did day trips to McLaren Vale and Victor Harbor. For me that approach takes the stress off finding suitable meal options, reduces travel days and in the case of Morioka significantly reduces the cost of the accomodation as the resorts are more costly but in most cases have no suitable food options at least listed online.

Build in a reliable chain backup. In Japan, CoCo Ichibanya (Japanese curry restaurant) often has allergen-specific menus and is worth knowing the location of in each city. I also do a quick check to see what supermarkets and convenience stores are handy, in small ski towns there may only be one, if any. It’s not exciting, but it’s useful to have in your back pocket.

For more detail on planning a trip with dietary restrictions check out the Step-by-Step Travel Planning Guide

Prepare for travel days and mountain days specifically

Mountain days and travel days are the ones that catch people out. You’re moving, food timing is unpredictable, and remote resorts especially can have very limited safe options at the cafeteria.

Pack a day bag for mountain days. For a remote resort like Geto Kogen, I’m planning onigiri from the night before in Morioka, plus backup snacks. Appi Kogen, the most food-equipped of the Morioka-area resorts has a Nepali-Indian restaurant in the base lodge, and Indian curries with rice are often a genuinely safe GF/DF option, but I will need to ask about butter / ghee in the curry, however not every resort will have that.

Backup food for the trip overall. Commercially packaged dehydrated meals or safe snacks travel well, and they’re there for the moments where timing doesn’t work out. This is especially true for ryokan or hotel dinners where you’ve pre-arranged something but the onsen village itself has nothing else. If you’re bringing food from home into Japan, check customs requirements, you’ll need to declare it.

Convenience stores are more useful than they look. Japanese convenience stores, think 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, Lawson all stock boiled eggs, plain onigiri (shio is the safest filling to look for but salmon or adzuki bean is also usually safe), and plain nuts in most locations. They’re not glamorous, but they’re usually there even in small towns, and knowing how to read the labels (or scan them) means you can use them confidently.

Onigiri from the convenience store 7-11 in Japan

The honest version

Off the beaten path travel with dietary restrictions is not seamless. Some places will have one safe option and it’ll be fine. Some places will have no reliable options and you’ll be glad you packed backup food. Some ryokan will go genuinely out of their way for you when you ask in advance and the dinner will be one of the best of the trip.

The framework above doesn’t make it perfectly smooth. It makes it manageable and worth doing, which is the point.

The places worth going to aren’t always the places with the longest lists of safe restaurants. Sometimes the thatched-roof post town with one soba shop that happens to do jūwari noodles is exactly right.

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Iceland Nut Allergy: Why Specific Always Beats General

Posted on March 21, 2026 by Jo

Iceland is one of those destinations that feels almost impossibly manageable when you arrive. English is everywhere, food labelling follows EU standards, and the locals are genuinely helpful. But if you travel with a tree nut allergy, there’s one thing that can quietly catch you out: the category itself.

“Tree nuts” is a medical term. It’s useful shorthand, but in a busy kitchen it leaves a lot of room for interpretation. This isn’t an Iceland problem, most kitchen staff worldwide know their ingredients. But naming your specific allergens; cashews, hazelnuts, pistachios, almonds, whatever your combination, is simply clearer communication wherever you are. Concrete is always better.

Tree nuts are not all in the same plant family and include almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashew nuts, pecans, Brazil nuts, pistachios and macadamia nuts. this means that many people who are allergic to tree nuts can be only allergic to one type of tree nut, but some are allergic to more. For example, it’s quite common for people with cashew nut allergy to be allergic to pistachios, and for people with walnut allergy to be allergic to pecans. Tree nut allergies are common – they are the most commonly known foods to cause anaphylaxis. According to Anaphylaxis UK about 1 in 50 children and 1 in 200 adults in the UK have a nut allergy.

If you want a free Iceland nut allergy card ready before you land, you can generate one for your specific restrictions further down, but it’s worth understanding a bit of context first. So here’s how to do that confidently in Iceland, from ordering at restaurants to reading labels at the supermarket.

Name Your Nuts (Specifically)

A chef might know their kitchen inside out but not immediately connect “tree nuts” to every nut on the shelf. When you name them individually; cashews, hazelnuts, pistachios, almonds, walnuts, you’re giving the kitchen something concrete to cross-check against.

It’s a small shift in how you communicate your allergy, and it makes a real difference in how clearly the message lands. Don’t drop the category entirely, saying “tree nut allergy” still sets important context, but follow it immediately with the specifics.

Carry a Written Allergy Card

Most Icelanders speak excellent English, but during a busy dinner service, a written allergy card is clearer and harder to mishear than a verbal explanation. It also lists your specific allergens in both English and Icelandic, so there’s no ambiguity about what you’re asking.

Generate your free allergy card here – choose your specific restrictions, yes even multiple and we’ll build it for you

One extra step worth doing before you leave: save your allergy card as text in your translation app. That way, if you’re somewhere the staff speak better German or Polish than English, you can translate it on the spot rather than relying on the Icelandic alone. I had to do this in Japan recently when the kitchen staff didn’t speak Japanese or English, I brought up my allergy card text, translated it into Hindi on the fly, and handled it right there.

Knowing when to use your allergy card versus your translation app is worth thinking about before you travel, an allergy card is fantastic at conveying the seriousness of your allergies but if you need to clarify preperation methods or cross contamination its time to swap to your translation app. Allergy Cards vs. Translation Apps

Learn to Read Icelandic Labels

A bag of Hazelnuts form a supermarket in Iceland

Icelandic supermarkets are well-stocked and labelling follows EU allergen rules (Regulation EU No 1169/2011) regarding the 14 major allergens that must be highlighted on packaging), so your allergens should be clearly marked.

The challenge is that Icelandic is a declined language, words change their endings depending on how they’re used. This means the same ingredient can look different on a packet versus a menu.

You don’t need to memorise every form. The trick is learning the root word and scanning for it. For hazelnuts, that’s heslihnet-. Spot that core, and you’ve spotted the ingredient, whatever ending is attached.

I recommend downloading your translation app and any offline language packs before you travel. Practising with it at home means you’re not figuring it out for the first time in a supermarket aisle. I find my local asian supermarket or the international foods section is perfect for this. Here’s our recommendations on the best translation apps and how to use it

For official guidance on Icelandic food labelling, the Reykjavik Public Health site has clear information.

Why Icelandic Ingredients Look Different on Labels vs. Menus

On packaging you’ll usually see the plural form, the label is listing what’s inside. On menus or allergen warnings, it might shift to a singular or dative form. It’s the same ingredient; it just looks different depending on context.

Hazelnuts is a good example: the packaging might say heslihnetur, but a menu warning could read heslihnetu or heslihnetum. The core word (heslihnet-) stays the same. That’s what to look for.

Note: The Icelandic translations in this table were machine-translated. If you spot an error, please let us know, we’d rather be corrected than have anyone rely on a mistake.

English	Icelandic (common on packaging – plural)	Also might appear as… (incl. singular/base form)
Allergy	ofnæmi	ofnæmis
Nut allergy	Hnetuofnæmi	hnetuofnæmis, ofnæmi fyrir hnetum
Nuts	hnetur	hnetum, hneta
Tree nuts	trjáhnetur	trjáhnetum, trjáhneta
Walnut	valhnetur	valhneta, valhnetu, valhnetum
Almond	möndlur	möndla, möndlu, möndlum
Cashew	kasjúhnetur	kasjúhneta, kasjúhnetu, kasjúhnetum
Hazelnut	heslihnetur	heslihneta, heslihnetu, heslihnetum
Pecan	pekahnetur	pekahneta, pekahnetu, pekahnetum
Pistachio	pistasíuhnetur	pistasíuhneta, pistasíuhnetu, pistasíuhnetum
Brazil nut	parahnetur	parahneta, parahnetu, parahnetum

Before You Go

Iceland is genuinely one of the more manageable destinations for food allergies, clear labelling, high English fluency, and a straightforward food culture. But manageable doesn’t mean effortless, especially when you’re working with a combination of restrictions.

If you want everything in one place, your specific allergens listed in Icelandic, an allergy card to show restaurant staff, key phrases for when your allergy card isn’t enough plus local foods to try and any watch outs, the Essentials Travel Pack builds it all for your exact combination.

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How to Read Gluten and Dairy Ingredients in 9 European Languages (+ Label Rules You Need to Know)

Posted on March 6, 2026 by Jo

Travelling Europe gluten-free can feel like a minefield if you’re not confident reading food labels. Let alone adding dairy into it as well. But don’t stress, with a few key words, spotting gluten and dairy becomes much easier. Here’s a breakdown of how to decode ingredient lists in French, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Greek, Polish, Portuguese and Turkish plus the labelling laws that help you stay safe.

Make sure you also know when to use a translation app vs. an allergy card when your overseas.

With a little prep and the right tools, you can enjoy the food without panic.

Headed to Europe? If you want everything in one place, your dietary restrictions listed in the local language, an allergy card to show restaurant staff, key phrases for when your allergy card isn’t enough plus local foods to try and any watch outs, the Essentials Travel Pack builds it all for your exact combination. It gives you what you need in minutes, not hours.

Table of Contents

EU-Wide Packaging Requirements

Under EU Regulation No 1169/2011, all packaged foods sold in the EU must:

Clearly label the 14 major allergens, including gluten-containing cereals
Highlight allergens in the ingredients list (bold, all caps, or underline)
List sub-ingredients if a compound ingredient (like “sausages”) contains an allergen
Use the local language(s) of the country where it’s sold

This means wheat, barley, rye, oats, and spelt must be clearly mentioned and highlighted, no matter the language.

close up of food products with hte ingredient label showing with gluten free ingredients in bold

Gluten Ingredients in European Languages

If you’re new to reading European labels, gluten is trickier than it looks. It’s not always listed as “gluten”, instead you’re scanning for the grains it comes from, and the words that signal it’s been processed or added.

What to watch for

Gluten hides in places you wouldn’t expect in European cooking: in stocks and sauces thickened with flour, in cured meats with breadcrumb fillers, in soups, marinades, and seasoning mixes. The most common culprits are wheat flour, barley malt, and soy sauce. Often buried mid-ingredients list under names that don’t immediately read as “gluten” in any language.