I just saw that Organic Valley does not include its cottage cheese in the company’s gluten- free list. I thought cottage cheese was gluten free?
Many brands of cottage cheese are gluten free. In the past, some gluten- free consumers worried about use of modified food starch in cottage cheese, but current allergen labeling laws would require any modified food starch made from wheat to say so on the label. You won’t see it very often, if at all, in cottage cheese. But it’s not modified food starch that keeps cottage cheese off the gluten- free list at Organic Valley. It is barley. The company says one of its suppliers has said “a barley source is used as the fermentation nutrient in one of our cultures.” The company’s research and development department says the barley should be “used up” during the manufacturing process. But Organic Valley does not test for gluten and says it can not definitely say there is no gluten in the final product. Some ingredients made from barley, including enzymes, can test at low enough levels that a food in which they were used would be gluten free. Meanwhile, you can find a number of brands of cottage cheese that are gluten free, including, but not limited to Daisy, Breakstone and Knudsen and a wide variety of store brands.
