Wal-Mart is requiring its private label suppliers to identify whenever gluten is used in its products, as new products labelled gluten-free hit the store shelves under the company’s Great Value brand.
Most of its private label products, almost a thousand, were found to be free of the wheat protein, a major marketing opportunity given that approximately 2m Americans suffer from celiac disease, the intolerance to wheat proteins.
Natural and health food stores have long dominated the US gluten-free food category, but products are more common today and will continue to be so now that the retail giant has entered the market.