I feel stuck, and Google hasn’t helped at all. It feels like every day, I find some new non-food thing that needs to be gluten-free. Or I need to check a new purchase of something that I used in the past, because just because something is gluten-free once doesn’t mean that it will be again. My current challenge: dish soap.
Two weeks ago I went on a search for gluten-free lipstick and found a bunch of brands that will be safe (though I still haven’t chosen which colors to get – that’s the harder part!) Last week I found gluten-free hand sanitizer after only a few attempts. But now I’m trying to figure out dish soap.
I want to get Dawn dish soap, but when I called the company, they couldn’t make any guarantees. They don’t add any gluten ingredients, but they can’t guarantee that the raw ingredients they get from other manufacturers are gluten-free. So it might be safe, but we can’t be sure.
But then I started thinking, does it matter? Wouldn’t it just be tiniest trace amounts? And I wash it off the dishes before I eat from them anyway, right? And when I eat gluten-free dishes at restaurants, I don’t check that they use gluten-free dish soap. Ditto for when my mom cooks for me. And I’m fine with those. So maybe it isn’t an issue?
I just don’t know, and I don’t know who to ask. I don’t have a medical professional I can turn to. So I’m asking you, dear readers, for your experiences. Some of you might say it matters and some might say it doesn’t, but either way, I’d love to know what you think. Please share in the comments: if you have Celiac or non-Celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS), do you get gluten-free dish soap? Do you think it matters?
Chronic Rants 
Hi Ms Rants – I don’t worry too much about GF dish soap, however I’m not super sensitive to cross contamination all the time and I know from previous posts that you are! It’s one of those things that – sometimes I react, and sometimes I don’t, so I think it likely depends what else is going on in my body that day if I’m run down or have had too much processed GF food (as opposed to naturally GF food like “real” food – lol) then I might react to some cross contamination whereas another day I wouldn’t – so this may happen for you as well. I did do a bit of looking around though and it looks like Method dish soap is all gluten free. I am in Canada, but I think Method is made out of Chicago – so not too far from where you are and hopefully you will be able to find some! Good luck!
PS – I would say if you are worried about it, then get as “clean/safe” as you can while you’re at home and then you will probably tolerate eating out or at your moms etc a bit better!
Wendy
Thanks so much for your feedback wlerch! Your point about small traces elsewhere being manageable if I’m keeping things 100% ok at home makes SO MUCH sense. Thanks! Interesting about the processed foods, too. I know personally, I can’t manage a lot of GF foods because they have corn (corn start, corn syrup, etc.) and that causes problems for me. But I’m the same with dairy – I can handle it some days but not others. You’re making me think of things in a new way, which is great – thanks again!
Hi CR!
Wow – I’ve never thought about ‘gluten-free dish soap’ before!
Wishing you the best in looking for it – Method brand sounds plausible. 😉
Thanks Karen! I still have to deal with this. There are so many annoying things that don’t feel urgent… until the day you realize you’ve run out of hand soap (which will happen soon if I’m not careful) or whatever else. Ugh. I better go get that dish soap!