Research Information System
Turk Hijyen ve Deneysel Biyoloji Dergisi, vol.78, no.3, pp.333-342, 2021 (Scopus)
© 2021. All Rights Reserved.Objective: Gluten-free products, despite their increasing popularity, energy and macronutrient contents are unknown. Therefore, this study aims to compare gluten-free products with their gluten containing counterparts on energy, macronutrients (carbohydrate, added sugar, total fat, saturated fat, dietary fiber, protein) and prices. Methods: In this study, 129 gluten-free (GF) and 304 similar gluten-containing (GC) products are bought from five hypermarkets in which located in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey to analyze their contents of energy, macronutrients, and prices based on their label information. The products were evaluated in eight subgroups: bread, pasta, flour, breakfast cereals, processed meat products, snack bars, sweet biscuits-cookies-cakes, crackers-salty crispies. The comparisons between groups performed using SPSS software. Results: In this study, gluten-free foods in bread, pasta, flour, biscuits-cookies-cakes, and crackers-salty crispies products are found to contain less protein than gluten containing products (p<0.05). Besides, compared to their GC counterparts, GF bread contains more total fat, and GF flours contain more carbohydrates (p<0.05). GF pasta contains less fiber and more carbohydrate than GC equivalents (p<0.05). Gluten-free sweet biscuits-cookies-cakes group has more added sugar than gluten-containing counterparts (p<0.05). Gluten-free snack products were found to contain more total fat, less fiber than counterparts. The gluten-free product groups except for processed meat products were more expensive than gluten-containing product groups (p<0.001). Conclusion: Despite the variations of food groups, gluten-free products are not nutritionally superior for healthy people because of their high carbohydrate, high total fat, low protein, and low dietary fiber contents. In addition, the high prices of GF products should also be considered. As a conclusion that recommending glutenfree products to healthy individuals will not provide additional benefits.