After digging a little, I think I found the start of an answer to this. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that saline solution contains sodium chloride. (Basically table salt.) In some cases, there is a small risk of gluten cross-contamination in that salt which may lead to some irritation for people who are extremely gluten intolerant.
This research path immediately opened up a mess of search results that I have no interest in digging through and fact checking.
Based on some of those search results though, I would speculate that there may have been some kind of overblown social media scare about gluten in salt and some companies just started categorizing eyedrops as gluten free.
Then, most importantly, I lost interest in this topic. Cheers!
Having recently found out I might be allergic to wheat, I also have to say I’d rather have “gluten-free” printed on the most ridiculous products than to not be quite sure. You would not believe in how many products, there’s some form of wheat (which in particular also includes barley and spelt).
For example, I bought some vinegar recently and then saw that it contains barley malt syrup. I guess, my assumption was wrong that wheat isn’t a liquid. But I’m not even sure, if that one would be covered by “gluten-free” either.
Allergies are a very real thing but so are Facebook hypochondriacs. Some marketing departments have little regard for either and will gladly label their products gluten free if it turns a higher profit. I had an online gaming companion that bought into the bullshit so hard, he was convinced a gluten free diet was curing his sons severe autism. Sigh.
I am bitching because the people that actually have issues always get left behind.
After digging a little, I think I found the start of an answer to this. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that saline solution contains sodium chloride. (Basically table salt.) In some cases, there is a small risk of gluten cross-contamination in that salt which may lead to some irritation for people who are extremely gluten intolerant.
This research path immediately opened up a mess of search results that I have no interest in digging through and fact checking.
Based on some of those search results though, I would speculate that there may have been some kind of overblown social media scare about gluten in salt and some companies just started categorizing eyedrops as gluten free.
Then, most importantly, I lost interest in this topic. Cheers!
thank you for the info kind soul!
Having recently found out I might be allergic to wheat, I also have to say I’d rather have “gluten-free” printed on the most ridiculous products than to not be quite sure. You would not believe in how many products, there’s some form of wheat (which in particular also includes barley and spelt).
For example, I bought some vinegar recently and then saw that it contains barley malt syrup. I guess, my assumption was wrong that wheat isn’t a liquid. But I’m not even sure, if that one would be covered by “gluten-free” either.
Allergies are a very real thing but so are Facebook hypochondriacs. Some marketing departments have little regard for either and will gladly label their products gluten free if it turns a higher profit. I had an online gaming companion that bought into the bullshit so hard, he was convinced a gluten free diet was curing his sons severe autism. Sigh.
I am bitching because the people that actually have issues always get left behind.