These days, people with celiac disease are exploding online against the new campaign of the hamburger company VICIO, very popular among young people and founded in 2020 by Oriol de Pablo and Aleix Puig, winner of the television program MasterChef in 2019. The brand This Monday, a banner was deployed in Madrid (Calle Carretas, 9) and another in Barcelona (Aribau, 89) to announce the “new gluten-free” product with “a very real flavor.” The banner features a woman wearing a crown and who bears a strong resemblance to Queen Letizia. “It will be difficult to differentiate them,” says the advertisement, referring to the fact that the flavor is very similar to that of the original burger. From November 6, gluten-free bread will be in VCIO kitchens. But what seemed to be joy has ended in disappointment. The large advertising poster includes a warning in small print at the bottom: “It may contain traces because it shares space with other foods containing gluten.”
VCIO acknowledges, in a message, that it took three years to release the new burger because “things in the palace move slowly.” But consumers have not minded this effort. The reproaches on social networks were immediate: “If it has traces, it is not gluten-free”, “who is the audience for these hamburgers if we celiacs cannot eat them?” They are just two protests from a long string of comments published on Instagram following the campaign’s promotional video. In it, a voice in off reads the following: “It fills us with pride and satisfaction to release the new gluten-free products from VICIO with a very real flavor, so real that they could seem the same, but they are not. If they were, we would be getting into a lot of trouble.” But the brand has been involved in a controversy with great media attention.
The person responsible for food safety at the Association of Celiacs and Gluten Sensitives, Blanca Esteban, believes that VICIO should not have made this announcement. “The company has to do a risk analysis to launch a gluten-free product,” she explained. If in the manufacturing process, the raw material or the final product presents a possibility of coming into contact with wheat belonging to another food that is manufactured in the same establishment, cross contamination occurs. “It is assumed that they will have detected a risk because they are warning about it,” she reflected.
Given this situation, the company released a statement this Thursday mid-afternoon to insist that “without having any legal or other type of obligation, VICIO decided to warn in its advertising that the gluten-free burger was made in a kitchen that was not exclusively for celiacs, therefore, it shared space with other products with gluten.”
Before issuing this official information, the company had responded on Instagram to some of the user complaints to clarify that neither the bread nor any ingredient in the burger, including the sauces, contain gluten. He has specified that they do take care of their processes, but that the campaign warning is a way to protect themselves “in case in any case a particle could fly from one place to another.” In another response he acknowledged that they work “in the same culinary space.” Esteban explains that cross contamination is avoided by establishing a separate area to cook the products so that they do not come into contact, especially with bread and flour containing gluten. “At the moment, we cannot build a location, but what we can do is everything possible to find alternatives for the greatest number of people,” the company concluded in its response to another user.
Since July 20, 2016, the European regulation for the transmission of information to consumers about the absence or reduced presence of this ingredient in food has been applied. It is established that the “gluten-free” declaration may only be used when the food, as sold to the final consumer, does not contain more than 20 milligrams of gluten per kilo. The company clarified this Thursday that the hamburgers comply with these regulations.
The company has also taken advantage of its statement to explain the production process that includes, among other measures, hand washing; putting on gloves; the tray and double waxed paper to avoid contact; independent and isolated utensils; the gluten-free bread is always in plastic and the assembly of the hamburger on top of the double paraffin paper. “Laboratory tests confirm that the VCIO procedure allows us to safely state that the gluten-free burgers served will be gluten-free,” he insisted.
The Association of Celiacs and Gluten Sensitives serves those responsible for restaurant establishments who want to offer products for them. They explain how to choose the raw material and how to handle it. In addition, they teach them how to serve it safely in the room. With the best of intentions, they have contacted VCIO to offer help. The company has announced that it began consulting with several associations “to ensure the cleanliness of its process.”
VICIO wanted to apologize to people with celiac disease for the lack of information about the company’s new launch: “The excitement of launching a product that would respond to more than three years of asking for a celiac burger, has led us to make some mistakes. of lack of definition or lack of specificity in a very serious matter related to the health of many people.”
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