Esposito's interest in gluten-free foods grew after she was diagnosed with hypoglycemia in high school.
"I started realizing how much I couldn't do gluten," Esposito said. "I eliminated that from my diet and I was like, 'Wow, well there's nothing really that you can eat as far as baked goods.' And I have a big sweet tooth!"
"We want our stuff to be as good as non-gluten-free, non-vegan, non-healthy stuff, because it's hard to find," said Lubert, who's allergic to wheat and dairy.
Their testing standards were thus fairly simple: "We know if we wouldn't eat it, then we wouldn't want anyone else to," Lubert said.
"Philly is a great place to be because there's so much emphasis with the NFCA wanting to make Philly a place that you can dine out at gluten-free restaurants," Esposito said.
"If there's nothing else to do and there's nowhere else to be, I want to be in my kitchen in my sweats," Lubert said as she took a warm, gluten-free ginger snap off a cookie sheet. "That's my happy place."
It's no fad
Gluten-free may sound like some new South Beach Diet, but according to Alice Bast, founder and president of the NFCA, that could not be further from the truth.
"It is not the hot new food trend," Bast said. "It's a serious health problem."
Until recently in the United States, celiac was considered a rare childhood disease, Bast said. It was more widely diagnosed in Europe, and awareness here increased after a 2003 University of Maryland study found that 1 in 133 people have it.
In 2004, celiac was reclassified as a common disease affecting 1 percent of the total U.S. population.
"That rarely happens," Bast said.
Through the NFCA, local chefs and food enthusiasts can take online training about the intricacies of a gluten-free diet.
"Some of the chefs think they really understand what is gluten-free," Bast said. "But after they go through GREAT [the foundation's Gluten-free Resource Education and Awareness Training], what they always say is, 'I thought I really understood it, but I realized how much I didn't know. I thought people were just on a gluten-free diet because it was a lifestyle, and then I went through the training and I realized that people's health is in my kitchen.' "
"You have to be strict on your gluten-free diet," Bast said. "It's not a lifestyle alternative. It's your medicine. It's your treatment, and you have to be vigilant."
