Shopping for Food in Europe, Australia and the US

Training for the Australian Olympic Sailing Team meant spending lots of time (between two and a half and 6 months) overseas each year. This meant that I had to find gluten free food in several different languages over the four years of the campaign. Eating out in Europe was the biggest challenge but my good friends at Freedom Foods helped make that process a little easier by supplying me with some credit card sized cards that explained in French, English, Spanish, German and Italian that I was gluten intolerant and unable to eat foods containing wheat, barley, rye and oats. The supermarket was another challenge - the biggest of which revolved around finding the friendly supermarkets in the first place. While Freedom Foods, ORGRAN and Australia's Own all helped me out with food and soy milk supplies that I took from home, there was only ever so much that could be shipped in the container with the boat and that could be carried in the car while we travelled around from Regatta to regatta. Consequently, I can now tell you that the best places to shop in my experiences are:

1. When in the UK - TESCO and Sainsburys (TESCO is my personal favourite, but Sainsburys is OK);
2. In Europe generally - "Carrefour" will have pretty much everything you need. In smaller towns, SPAR supermarkets have a reasonable range which is supported by the stocks of the local health food shop as well as the pharmacys (Farmacia, Pharmacia, Apotheke etc);
3. In Seattle, Portland and California, USA - Trader Joe's
4. In Australia - Coles Supermarkets, with "Woolworths" coming in a close second with their new and still expanding "Free From" range.