{
    "id": 1070743,
    "title": "Wheat in sweets",
    "slug": "wheat-in-sweets",
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    "url": "https://sweeties.net/wiki/wheat-in-sweets/",
    "modified": "2026-09-26T02:18:53+01:00",
    "excerpt": "Wheat turns up in liquorice, wafer bars and malted centres, while wheat glucose syrup is exempt from gluten labelling. How to spot wheat and gluten.",
    "content_text": "Wheat is not what most people picture in a bag of sweets, yet it appears in several of them. Cereals containing gluten, such as wheat, barley, rye and oats, are one of the 14 allergens, so wherever they appear in a packed sweet, they must be emphasised in the ingredients list.\nWhere wheat turns up\nLiquorice. The essential ingredients of black liquorice are liquorice extract, sugar and a binder, and the base is typically starch or flour, gum arabic, gelatine or a mix of them. Where the flour is wheat flour, the sweet contains gluten: see are sweets gluten free?Wafer bars. Published ingredient lists for Kit Kat, a wafer bar, include wheat flour in several countries.Malted centres. Maltesers have a malted milk centre, and their European ingredients include barley malt extract and wheat flour.\nThe glucose syrup exemption\nGlucose syrup is used in confectionery, and it can be made from wheat as well as from maize, potatoes and other starches. The allergen rules make a specific exception: wheat based glucose syrups, including dextrose, and wheat based maltodextrins do not count as a gluten allergen, and neither do glucose syrups made from barley. So a sweet can contain glucose syrup made from wheat without being labelled as containing gluten.\nGluten free means 20 parts per million\nA gluten free claim on a UK label means the food contains no more than 20 parts per million of gluten, as Coeliac UK explains. Sweets without the claim may still contain no gluten ingredients, but only the claim tells you the 20 parts per million limit is met, and some sweets carry precautionary warnings: see what does may contain mean on sweets?\nCoeliac disease and wheat allergy\nCoeliac disease is caused by eating gluten, found in wheat, barley, rye and their derivatives, and a gluten free diet is an effective treatment. A wheat allergy is a different condition. Both mean checking every label, including on sweets.\nIn our pick and mix, liquorice sweets such as Liquorice Allsorts and soft liquorice twists are the ones to check first if you avoid wheat. Each sweet card shows its ingredients and allergens before you buy.",
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