One Decision: Creating a Consumer Device vs. a Commercial Device

Current and potential customers often ask us why we decided to create a food sensor for consumers versus a food testing device for restaurants to use. Why not put the onus on the businesses preparing foods to ensure the foods they are marketing as gluten-free truly are? The short answer: It’s complicated.

The basis for our decision came from initial market research we did before even founding the company.

As you may know, unlike packaged foods, restaurant foods labeled as gluten-free are not regulated by the FDA. Back in 2012, we interviewed about 30 restaurant industry professionals in the Boston area to discuss their viewpoints on serving gluten-free menu items and food testing. For the most part, restaurants were not seeing gluten-free dining as a pain point. They made their best effort to accommodate special dietary needs, but some restaurant staff thought that if someone is highly sensitive or allergic to a food, they shouldn’t even be eating out. Restaurants needed to cater to the masses due to razor-thin margins - people with celiac disease and/or food allergies were not the majority of the population, so they were willing to take that hit if a small percentage don’t frequent their establishment.

Now in 2016, restaurants are understanding that ingredients and special dietary needs are becoming more important to the American diner, but restaurants have a hard time prioritizing among a host of other concerns, as shown by the National Restaurant Association.

If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant, you’ll know how chaotic and busy both the front and back of house can be, with multiple touch points between the customer ordering food and the dish being served to the customer. Restaurant staff don’t know where the device fits in operationally: Do they test the raw ingredients? Do they test the finished product? Even then, they won’t know what caused the cross-contamination. And gluten isn't the only intolerance they need to cater to (peanut, milk, shellfish, soy, egg and countless others), so testing all their foods for people with numerous allergies or diets would be cumbersome.

Consumers with celiac disease and/or food allergies and intolerances, on the other hand, have a visceral need to know what’s in their food. They’re the folks getting sick from unintended gluten exposure one out of every five times they dine out. They want to have the data in their hands to make better, healthier decisions about what they choose to eat. A recent survey by OpenTable found that 86 percent of diners check menus before going to a restaurant, and about 20 percent of diners wish restaurants knew about their allergies beforehand. We found that the pain point really was with the consumer. They want to feel empowered by having information about their food. In our recent findings, nearly 75 percent of gluten-free consumers would want to test their food for gluten before eating. Based on these conversations and studies, we built Nima to be a portable device that consumers could use on-the-go versus a system for restaurant owners, chefs and staff to use in the kitchen.

However, as consumer trends continue to change, do we see food testing on the restaurant side becoming more prevalent in the future? Absolutely. We believe that as more and more diners have these sensors and can obtain real-time data about the foods being served, restaurants will start to see the need for validation of menu labels.

The interest is already starting to trickle in. In our neck of the woods in San Francisco, the owner of Pica Pica Arepa Kitchen approached us to use Nima so she could validate her claims that her kitchen is 100 percent gluten-free. She sources all gluten-free ingredients and touts a gluten-free menu and kitchen as a differentiator for locals who can’t or don’t eat gluten. She now uses Nima to randomly test and verify her ingredients so her guests can dine with confidence. We suspect that more and more restaurants will want to embrace the diner with special dietary needs, even make their accommodations a unique selling point and use Nima to verify their claims.

While there are a few restaurants leading the industry in offering and testing gluten-free dishes, right now, the majority don’t see it as a priority. Once Nima gets into the hands of consumers and you start seeing them at dinner tables near you, we can only hope consumer demand for food transparency will translate to a bigger emphasis for restaurants.

Recap: A Night with Nima at Pica Pica

Thanks to everyone in the Bay Area who came to our pop-up event at Pica Pica Arepa Kitchen on Tuesday night! We had quite a crowd of folks eager to see Nima in action.

Pica Pica arepa with Nima displaying a gluten-free happy face.

Pica Pica is a 100% gluten-free restaurant, and its ingredients are now Nima-verified. We do regular and random testing on their ingredients to ensure they meet the FDA guideline for gluten-free (less than 20 parts per million).

6SensorLabs CEO and co-founder, Shireen Yates, showing Nima to event attendees.

6SensorLabs CEO and co-founder, Shireen Yates, demoed Nima with Pica Pica's tasty gluten-free arepas and mingled with attendees. Nima told us everything was gluten-free!

Blogger Erin Smith of Gluten-Free Globetrotter and CEO Shireen Yates pose with Nima. Photo courtesy of Erin Smith (IG: glutenfreeglobetrotter)

Photo courtesy of Erin Smith (IG: glutenfreeglobetrotter)

Photo courtesy of Erin Smith (IG: glutenfreeglobetrotter)

We also released some restaurant testing data that we've done in the San Francisco area. Once we start shipping the device, this data will live in the Nima app, where you can search for restaurants, upload your own test results and see results from other users in the community. The results below give you an idea of how these reports might inform your own future dining decisions.

We hope everyone had an enlightened and enjoyable time!

Couldn't make it to Pica Pica? Read this great recap from Gale Naylor over at Celiac Safe Eats. And, please stay in touch for future opportunities to meet us and see Nima up close and personal.

Want to see a virtual demo of Nima with your local celiac or gluten-free group? Fill out this form to request a Skype/Google Hangout demo.

Nima Chemistry vs. R-Biopharm

Often, when people first hear about Nima, they say, “You have to be kidding me!” or, “Is it real? Please, let it be real.”

Yes, Nima is real!

The second question we usually get is, “Does it work?”

We’re working hard to conduct external third-party validations of Nima so that you know not only does it work but also the level of sensitivity of the system.

Nima is designed to be 99.5 percent accurate at 20 parts per million of gluten. We conduct on-going food testing to provide feedback on our accuracy, and this time, we compared our chemistry to a leading antibody, using outside laboratories to conduct the comparisons for us.

The comparison testing showed that Nima’s proprietary chemistry identified all cases where gluten was present at more than 20 ppm, as well as three cases where gluten levels were below 20 ppm.

This post explains what we tested, how we tested it and the results from the external labs versus Nima’s chemistry.

What did we test?

We compiled a set of 47 food items for testing, ranging from packaged foods to gluten-free items ordered at restaurants. Out of 47 foods, 25 were restaurant foods and 22 packaged goods.

Twenty-five restaurant items were ordered and selected for inclusion based on online reviews that had complaints of contamination, items previously ordered by us and tested as containing gluten, or items labeled gluten-free. Restaurant purchases were made by calling or ordering with a note that these food items were for someone with either a “severe gluten allergy” or celiac disease.

For the 22 packaged goods tested, items were chosen based on a few criteria: top items from consumer surveys, inbound requests for testing, online reports of cross-contamination/sickness, items with gluten-free ingredients without a gluten-free label, items that definitely were flagged as containing wheat and things produced on equipment also used for wheat products.

In all cases where cross-contamination or complaints about a food substance exist, they are purely anecdotal and remain unsubstantiated. It is important to review these sources since, until Nima and its app launches, people rely upon others’ reports of sickness to make eating decisions.

How did we sample and test Nima’s chemistry?

We partnered with two labs: Bia Diagnostics, a lab with 30 years in laboratory experience and nearly 20 years in food allergen testing, and BioAssaySystems, a well-known leader in the development of innovative and high-throughput assays and assay kits.

Two samples of each of the items were taken, with one sample sent to Bia Diagnostics and another sent to BioAssaySystems.

Bia tested its samples with the R-Biopharm 7001 kit, an AOAC-approved kit for gluten testing often considered the industry standard. The limit of detection (LOD) for this assay is 2 ppm, and limit of quantification (LOQ) is 5 ppm. What does this mean? For results greater than 5 ppm, there is a high degree of statistical confidence in the absolute value of gluten present. If the level is under 2 ppm, it may or may not contain gluten -- there is a much lower level of statistical confidence in the value. As a result, the tests Bia conducted with the R-Biopharm 7001 kit report the actual parts per million for the amount of gluten present when greater than 5 ppm. If the sample contains more than 84 ppm, due to the limited dynamic range of the assay, you will only see >84 ppm and not a specific number in the reporting.

The set of samples tested with Nima's technology were sent to BioAssaySystems. There, these food items were evaluated using the proprietary sample preparation and the 6SensorLabs proprietary antibody and assay designed specifically to work with the Nima device. BioAssaySystems reported the results of each test as containing gluten or no gluten detected, just as somene using Nima would see. Each item is reported in the tables below with the indicator someone using the device would see: frown (any gluten detected) or a smile (the sample contains less than 20 ppm of gluten).

Results Summary

Total items tested: 47
Percent containing gluten, reported by Nima: 13 percent
Percent containing gluten, reported by R-Biopharm: 13 percent

Six out of 47 total items (13 percent) contained gluten in some level as reported by Nima and by the R-Biopharm assay. Of the 47 items, only two were expected to contain gluten.

Restaurant testing results

Restaurant foods tested, ordered to be gluten-free: 25
Percent containing gluten, reported by Nima: 20 percent
Percent containing gluten, reported by R-Biopharm: 20 percent

All 25 restaurant items were ordered as gluten-free. Of these, Nima and R-Biopharm each have five reports of gluten contamination. Of these five, only one item exceeded the FDA standard for gluten-free (20 ppm) -- and that one item tested at greater than 84 ppm in the quantified results, more than four times the amount considered to be gluten-free.

Packaged goods results

Packaged goods tested, expected gluten-free: 20
Percent containing gluten, reported by Nima: none
Percent containing gluten, reported by R-Biopharm: none

Items tested, known to contain gluten or wheat in ingredients: 2
Percent containing gluten, reported by Nima: 100 percent
Percent containing gluten, reported by R-Biopharm: 100 percent

The packaged foods were more straightforward. Even in cases where food was selected that was not certified or was produced on shared equipment, results between Nima and R-Biopharm both show that no gluten could be detected. For the two items with gluten or wheat ingredients, both picked it up and reported the item as containing gluten.

Differences between Nima and R-Biopharm Results: Restaurant Foods

The raw data below shows all results from both Nima (as conducted by BioAssaySystems) and R-Biopharm (as conducted by Bia) tests.

Both Nima and R-Biopharm results report five items as containing gluten, however, only four items are the same between the two tests. Three items tested as having greater than 10 ppm of gluten with R-Biopharm. Each of these would have reported a frown with Nima. Additionally, one item at 3.6 ppm as identified by R-Biopharm also would have yielded a frown from Nima.

There are two discrepancies between the two tests:

-Sample was 7 ppm with the R-Biopharm test, which Nima labeled as gluten-free: This item qualifies as gluten-free based on U.S. FDA standards. -One item which Nima labeled as having contained gluten, which R-Biopharm reported as less than 5 ppm: In this case, it’s possible that sampling impacted the results, as in previous rounds of testing from this restaurant, we have found low levels of contamination.

Differences between Nima and R-Biopharm Results: Packaged Foods

The raw data below shows all results from both Nima (as conducted by BioAssaySystems) and R-Biopharm (as conducted by Bia) tests. No discrepancies were found.

What’s Next?

2016 will bring full system validation conducted by a third party. This third party will summarize their results, which will compare the Nima device to results from a leading antibody. The results will be published on the 6SensorLabs blog and distributed in emails to all our subscribers on our email lists.

Research reported in this publication was partially supported by the National Institute Of Diabetes And Digestive And Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R44DK105770. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Top 10 Most Read 6SensorLabs Blog Posts of 2015

Our 2015 has been a whirlwind year at 6SensorLabs, and for those of you who have been following along with us on the blog, you'll know all about our biggest milestones.

However, if you're just joining us on our journey to create Nima (as well as a happier mealtime), these are the top 10 most read 6SL blog posts in 2015. They range from big Nima news to restaurant food testing and research findings. Happy reading!

10) Survey: More than half of milk avoiders are still exposed to milk or milk products at least once a month
Not only are we developing a sensor for gluten, but tests for milk and peanut are on the way in 2017. As part of our development process, we surveyed our email list to learn more about the folks who avoid dairy.


Food testing - gluten-free pizza

9) Food testing: SF restaurants, round 2
In our quest to find hidden gluten, we regularly test restaurant foods with Nima's chemistry. These are results from our second round of testing.

8) Food testing: SF restaurants, round 3
Same as above, but our third round of restaurant foods.

7) In the lab: Cross-contamination testing with restaurant food
In which we discuss spot testing vs. emulsifying and testing an entire dish. Results? Every dish is different.

Food testing - gluten-free French fries

6) 6SensorLabs on the gluten-free French fry hunt
All the "gluten-free" french fries we sampled passed the GF test!

5) Webinar recap: All about chemistry - how Nima tests for gluten
In July, we held a webinar with our lead scientist, Dr. Jingqing Zhang, to discuss the chemistry behind Nima. You can also watch the webinar on-demand if you missed it!

4) Food testing: An ongoing process at 6SensorLabs
The first in our restaurant testing series - most were under the 20 ppm limit, but some gluten was present.

3) One decision: One-time use capsules
One of the most popular questions we get about Nima is, "how do I clean the capsules?" The answer is, you don't because the capsules are one-time use only. In this post, we explain why the capsules aren't reusable.

2) [Infographic] How to dine out with Nima
Many folks are overjoyed when they hear about the technology becoming available to test food for gluten so they can worry less and enjoy more at mealtime. Some still ask how to approach using Nima at a restaurant, since that's the most questionable place for those with food intolerances to eat. We created a graphic showing how to talk to waitstaff and chefs about Nima and your food intolerances.

1) Mark your calendar! Nima available for pre-orders October 20
In October, the wait was finally over. Our most popular blog post was the announcement of the pre-sale date for Nima. Check it out if you still haven't pre-ordered yours!

See you in 2016 - and happy new year!

The Power of Nima: Saving Days of Being Glutened

Since I’ve been able to use our Nima prototype over the past few months to test food for gluten, I’ve been able to save myself from about two weeks of feeling sick. In other words, Nima has saved me a collective 15 days* from the health repercussions from unintentionally eating gluten. Every time I accidentally eat gluten, it takes me about five days to recover, which means missed days of work, pain and discomfort. If you can’t relate to the stress of living with a sensitivity to food (from the perspective of someone with celiac disease and the pains of avoiding gluten), you should read this.

In the last few months, here’s where Nima has come to the rescue for me, letting me know when there was gluten in my meal, when I otherwise would have eaten it. Note: everything I tested was labeled gluten-free on the menu or by the chef.

"Gluten-free" cupcakes

Cupcake at a catered event: I was going to eat a gluten-free labeled cupcake at our office when my team reminded me to test it with Nima! We took a sample and tested it, and it came back positive for gluten. We sent the sample to the lab to validate the results, and sure enough it came back as 80ppm of gluten - well over the recommended 20 ppm.

Saved = 5 days

Egg rolls at a catered event: We catered an event in NY and tested all the food before to find that the “gluten-free” egg rolls showed positive for gluten (after three tests on three different samples of the plate).

Saved = 5 days

Pancake at a restaurant: I was out at a restaurant about to dish into a gluten-free labeled pancake and the sample of food came back positive for gluten.

Saved = 5 days

Total = 15 days

Here are a few highlights of what I’ve also been able to test and enjoy!

Arepa at a restaurant: Eating out at Pica Pica I tested and enjoyed both the arepas and empanadas. They were deliciously gluten-free

Vegetarian quiche at a conference: I ate at an event and tested the corn-based quiche, and I loved seeing the smiley face because I was famished.

Rice pancake at a restaurant: I tested the rice pancake at a restaurant, which was gluten-free!

Curry soup at a wedding: Nima made a formal debut at my good friends’ wedding. There was another gluten-sensitive wedding goer, and we were able to test the curry soup, and it was all gluten-free!

Nima processing gluten-free curry soup

I love having my Nima in my back pocket as an extra safety measure when out and about!

*Of course, these are just fun estimations, but aligned with my experience with being glutened in the past, but everyone reacts to different levels of gluten.

When Gluten-Free Isn't Gluten-Free

"Gluten-free" cupcakes

Our CEO Shireen often talks about how Nima has already saved her from unintentionally eating gluten. This story is one of those instances.

Getting "glutened" takes many different forms, depending on each individual. For Shireen, unknowingly eating gluten means a lot of pain, days of recovery and missed work. These unintented exposures are what inspired her to create Nima.

Now that we've had a couple test units of Nima built in-house ahead of manufacturing, Shireen's been able to carry Nima around with her and add some peace of mind when she's eating food she hasn't prepared herself. She loves seeing Nima smiling back at her.

On this particular day, 6SensorLabs was hosting an event in our office and ordered gluten-free cupcakes from a local bakery. We were told that the kitchen is not a dedicated, 100% gluten-free kitchen, but they did in fact make gluten-free cupcakes.

They came in so many different flavors and looked delicious. Before she took a bite, Shireen decided to test a bit of the cupcake, just in case.

After about two minutes, Nima displayed a frown. After additional testing out of curiosity, we found that the cupcake had more than 80 ppm of gluten. 80 ppm! Just as a reminder, for a packaged good to be labeled gluten-free, it has to have less than 20 ppm of gluten. That means these cupcakes were four times the amount of gluten to be considered gluten-free. Shireen would have been out of commission for a few days had she eaten that cupcake.

We don't know if we were given the wrong cupcakes or if there was just that much cross-contamination in the kitchen, but these cupcakes were clearly not gluten-free, regardless of how they were labeled.

Eating gluten-free is tricky - and people have these kind of experiences all the time, where they have to guess at what may have made them sick or are just waiting to see if they'll have a reaction. This time, Shireen was able to enjoy the rest of her day and do her presentations with no worry.

In the lab: cross-contamination testing with restaurant food

A frequent question we get is how well Nima will be able to detect cross-contamination. People are concerned about a slice of bread that was cut with a knife used to cut a slice of rye bread or the impact of stray crouton dust.

To understand how real the threat of cross-contamination is and how much we might or might not capture with our device, we designed an experiment where we ordered food from 18 restaurants, ranging from fast food ($) to high-end restaurants ($$$$$). For each order, we indicated that the recipient either had celiac disease or had a severe gluten intolerance. We had this food either delivered or picked up and brought to the office. For items picked up in person, a confirmation that the food was gluten-free was verbally requested. In some cases, restaurant staff went above and beyond to explain separate fryers or to inform us that our original request was not gluten-free and guided us to more appropriate options (much appreciated, restaurants!).

Once back in our office, we took a spot sample from each part of the dish. So for a pizza, we sampled the toppings and then the crust. In the case of a meal, we might take a small sample of the main course and the sides separately.

We then emulsified the remainder of the meal and took a sample of the entire plate to determine the level of gluten across the entire dish.

We followed lab protocol, documenting each item in a spreadsheet, and with photos, bagging each item carefully for processing.

Our findings are largely inconclusive. In all cases, the food qualifies as gluten-free, that is, everything was found to be under 20 parts per million (ppm) of gluten.

Highlights:

• In five cases, we did detect gluten between 10 and 20 ppm.
• In another five of 18 cases, we detected gluten between 5 - 10 ppm.
• In three of 18 cases, the emulsified dish detected a higher level of gluten than we found from spot detection.
• In three of 18 cases, the spot detection found a higher level of gluten than in the emulsified dishes.
• Only one case had showed no gluten at the spot detection level but did find gluten at the emulsified level.

One of the reasons we looked at a range of prices was that people often assume that "fancier" restaurants are safer.^^ This wasn't necessarily true, as only one of our five fast food restaurants showed traces of gluten -- and was still below 10 ppm. The mid-tier seemed to be the biggest problem area, with three of seven showing gluten between 5 and 20 ppm. Of the most expensive tiers, two of five restaurants had gluten between 5 and 20 ppm. Interestingly, in both cases, we found gluten in the spot check, but not in the emulsified food.

What conclusions can we draw from this? The main one is that you have to be vigilent no matter what. You may find that spot testing food finds gluten that you wouldn't encounter over the whole dish. Nima will definitely help you to find some hot spots, but you'll still need to proceed with caution in those times where you get a smiley face. It's the frowny face that should make you send that dish back!

^^To be truthful, it was also to make our staff cry that they weren't able to eat beautiful dishes like these.

One Decision: A Limit of Detection for Gluten

This is part of a series of blog posts on decisions we’ve made in the course of business, to provide some insight into our business and product development process. Posts are not chronological. This post examines how we determined our level of detection for gluten.

Research assistant performs restaurant food testing with gluten-free hamburger at 6SensorLabs.

Once Nima is in the hands of consumers next year, everyone will be eager to see a smiley face looking back at them after testing their food for gluten. But what does the smile emoticon actually mean?

We spent a year developing our own custom antibody for gluten. The detection is based on a type of assay called an immunoassay. These assays take advantage of protein antibodies, which are able to specifically recognize a single target of interest - in our case, gluten. A small amount of gluten will trigger the antibody to bind to the gluten molecule which we can detect and display with the device - the smile or frown emoticon you see. A frown for detected gluten, a smile for "gluten-free."

As we worked toward our detection efforts for gluten, we had to decide how sensitive our test would be and what would appear as a negative result.

Nima's level of detection

We are aiming to detect gluten at 20 ppm, meaning if the display shows a negative result for gluten, the sample has less than 20 ppm of gluten.

Why 20 ppm?

There are a few considerations we had to make when choosing a limit of detection. First, we noted that while individuals have sensitivities and/or reactions to different levels of gluten, there is currently no way to determine a gluten tolerance level on an individual basis (lest you make yourself sick to find out).

As a result of this range of consumer reaction levels, consumers have looked to various regulatory agencies to define what gluten-free means. This way, food manufacturers and preparers can be held to specific standards. However, countries differ on what defines a food as gluten-free, and some people react to levels below these guidelines.

In August 2013, the U.S. FDA issued a gluten-free labeling rule specifying that a food can only be labeled as “gluten-free” if it contains less than 20 ppm of gluten. The U.K. has the same rule, while Australia and New Zealand have less than 5 ppm as their standard for gluten-free.

Since we're launching Nima in the U.S. first, the U.S. FDA ruling of less than 20 ppm is the best guideline that we currently have for labeling which foods are gluten-free.

Cross-contamination

Even the term ppm itself has questions surrounding it. PPM means parts per million, which relates to a percentage of a sample, so the gluten ppm also depend on the size of the sample.

Say you have a piece of gluten-free bread that has been cut with a knife that was also used to cut whole-wheat bread. If you test the part of the bread that the knife touched, the ppm of gluten might be 50 ppm because that whole piece is covered in gluten. However, if you take the whole piece of bread and test it for gluten, the gluten from the knife is diluted throughout the whole sample and may come out as 15 ppm, which is gluten-free by FDA standards. Will the whole piece of bread cause a reaction for someone with celiac disease or a gluten allergy? The piece that touched the knife is not gluten-free, but technically the whole piece of bread is.

From our own restaurant food testing, we have seen results come back both ways - either a sample has higher ppm of gluten and the entire dish is considered gluten-free, or a sample is gluten-free and the entire dish comes back with a higher ppm of gluten, meaning the plate was elsewhere contaminated.

Therefore, it's important to understand that Nima tests just one sample from your dish. The risk of cross-contamination remains for any food you did not sample, and folks with allergies, celiac disease or other sensitivites should always proceed with caution even if a test comes back negative for gluten. Each person is different.

Other allergens

Limits of detection will get trickier as we expand to other allergens for Nima. One challenge of peanuts, milk, shellfish, soy and others is that regulatory agencies have not defined any thresholds for allergen levels that are sufficient to cause an adverse reaction in the allergic population. Without a better understanding of such a threshold, it’s difficult to choose a limit of detection for our assay. We are consulting with regulatory agencies to better understand the problem and to propose a reasonable limit of detection that would cover a majority of cases. For example, if 99 percent of the peanut allergic population is responding to a certain peanut level, we should try to meet or exceed this level of detection in our test.

Webinar Recap: All About Chemistry - How Nima Tests for Gluten

On Tuesday's webinar, 6SensorLabs Lead Scientist Dr. Jingqing Zhang held a chemistry 101 lesson on Nima, providing insights on the science behind our sensor, our limits of detection for gluten and what's in the pipeline for Nima in the near future. Big thanks to everyone who attended!

If you weren't able to join us, you can watch a playback of the presentation below. For any follow-up questions, please feel free to contact us via our contact form.

We look forward to hosting future educational events with our users!

6SensorLabs on the Gluten Free French Fry Hunt

One of our summer interns, Adil, did some extremely important research! Here's a re-cap of the things he found.

This past week 6SensorLabs went on a french fry quest, visiting five restaurants around San Francisco. We chose these restaurants for a variety of reasons; either to make sure that the claim of 100% gluten free was valid or to inspect such restaurants that customers online (on Yelp, Google Reviews, and gluten-free blogs) had said made them sick.

After informing the staff at each restaurant that I have a gluten allergy and asking them whether their french fries would upset me, I recorded their responses and ordered fries (making sure to store them without any cross-contamination on my part!). While having a french fry scandal would have been exciting, the results are back in from the lab and they are rather comforting: all five samples contained gluten levels of under 5ppm.

French fries packaged for testing

Are restaurants that advertise themselves as totally gluten-free or having gluten-free options truly safe for those of us with gluten allergies? With french fries, the main concern is that the fryer is not dedicated to non wheat-containing foods. Cross contamination occurs when gluten comes into contact with otherwise gluten-free food during any part of the preparation process: when food is placed on a counter top before serving or at your table, sharing utensils or cookware, or if those in the kitchen don’t properly wash their hands. This can be a huge source of fear for those with gluten allergies that want to eat out.

The goal with Nima is to help address some of those fears.

Food Testing: SF Restaurants, Round 3

From Research Assistant, Alex Leung, comes a write up of the most recent round of restaurant testing.

Food Testing, Round TRES!

We’re back ... here at 6SensorLabs, we like food and we know how hard it is to enjoy dishes when you have dietary restrictions, food allergies, or auto-immune diseases which require a special diet. Thus, we test and gather as much data in a real life environment as we can, so you can trust and believe in our products. As previous rounds of food testing have mentioned, our current target is on gluten - although we’ve been working on other allergens in different ways.

We continue to test for gluten in the same method as previously described. We pick three local food venues, all of which have gluten-free options. We put those food samples through our product, Nima, and the gluten testing kit approved and certified by the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists International (AOAC) called R-Biopharm’s RidaScreen® Gliadin. We record both results (Nima's binary result and AOAC's quantitative result) and compare them alongside each other in order to see if the NIMA’s result matches the standard gluten testing kit.

The results show that every sample tested except one meets the definition for gluten free - under 20 parts per million (ppm). Although a couple dishes are below the 20 ppm threshold, people with higher sensitivity could still get sick from eating them.

One of the biggest risks of eating out is cross contamination. As you can see from the chart, Restaurant 1’s and Restaurant 3’s fries have very different results. Restaurant 1’s entire menu is gluten free, while Restaurant 3 has a couple of gf options across a broader menu. In doing so, the risk of cross contamination increases, and ordering a gluten-free option almost becomes pointless especially dealing with deep fryers. Someone with high gluten sensitivity would definitely gotten sick from eating at Restaurant 3.

Another pain point is that servers or chefs do not understand someone’s dietary restrictions. Our entire order for Restaurant 2 was “gluten-free”, yet the cooks made sure we got our "free" side order of bread. When we tested the level of gluten in the bread, it was actually beyond the dynamic range of the standard gluten testing kit. A customer could easily mistaken such bread to be gluten-free since the entire order was “gluten-free.”

This round of testing have shown the dining experience can sometimes be a hit or miss, and while trying out new food can be exciting suffering the consequences of food contamination will always be unpleasant. While you wait patiently for our product, we will continue to work on gathering data and making sure our product meet our standards and quality.

Food Testing: SF Restaurants, Round 2

6SensorLabs holds ourselves to high standards across the board but especially for product quality. We test food every week because we know people need Nima to be thoroughly vetted. We base our lines of inquiry on what people tell us are their largest areas of concern when eating outside the home or ordering in food. Mostly, people tell us they are focused on the food itself and the restaurant’s environment, such as the server’s knowledge or food preparation areas. Based on lots of interviews, surveys, food diaries, and secondary research, we put together lists of the foods people most want to test. Our current research focuses on gluten - although we’ve been doing testing on other allergens in smaller ways.

For this second round of test results we’re sharing, we compared what our product results will look like to the industry standard for gluten testing. Nima gives a binary response: either the item contains gluten at a certain level of detection (at least 20 ppm or better if we can!) or it does not. As mentioned in our first post, a scientific technique called Sandwich ELISA enables people to quantitatively and reliably measure gluten levels in food and is the preferred method to test gluten in food manufacturing and in restaurants. The ELISA kit we use in the restaurant testing, R-Biopharm’s RidaScreen® Gliadin, is approved and certified by the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists International (AOAC) as a performance tested method. We run Nima with our 6SensorLabs developed chemistry alongside the AOAC kit to ensure our sensitivity matches this standard test.

We picked three local food venues, all of which have gluten-free options, and one of which has reports of cross contamination. The results show that every sample tested meets the definition for gluten free - under 20 parts per million (ppm). Allergic consumers may react at lower levels, as evidenced by our CEO, Shireen, being sickened by 10ppm donuts in our last round of research.

The chart below shows the averaged results for each item. What? Think we only test each item once? Nope, we’re thorough. we also find the results to be remarkably consistent in terms of gluten levels with some small variance from test to test. We’ll discuss this in more detail in a future post.

You’ll see some of these are rice and meat dishes. Some are sandwiches with gluten-free bread. The most contaminated items were a pork sandwich (on gluten free bread) and french fries. We know fried foods can strike terror into the hearts of gluten-free diners, and this shows that fear justified. The salad bar show extremely minute quantities of gluten for items like plain corn or black beans that should be gluten free.

After our last post, we were asked why we haven’t shared the results with the restaurants named. Mainly what we are interested in doing is proving our chemistry is accurate and efficacious. Two, our testing has been conducted primarily locally, and is of less interest to folks outside the Bay Area. Three, we have to approach each restaurant, who doesn’t know their food has been subject to scrutiny, and let them know.

This data does show that places that may not be marketing an item as gluten free may be perfectly fine dining experiences, while items marketed as gluten free may not be. Warnings may be valuable at pointing to times when you need to be wary, or it may feel extraneous. This all points to inconsistent dining experiences -- where testing your food may be the only answer.