Is seitan gluten free?

Gluten, with the rest of the wheat rinsed off. Wheat dough is kneaded under running water until the starch washes away and what is left in your hands is an elastic mass of pure protein, which is then simmered in stock. Buddhist monastic cooks in China worked this out centuries ago. It is the most concentrated source of gluten a person can eat — considerably more so, gram for gram, than bread.

Because the name gives nothing away and the context actively misleads. Seitan lives in the vegan and vegetarian part of the menu, next to tofu and tempeh and the bean dishes, in a section somebody avoiding animal products has learned to read as the safe column. Plant-based and gluten-free get mentally filed together, and they have nothing to do with each other. The person most at risk is somebody newly vegetarian who is also newly diagnosed.

FDA — packaged food

On a packet, the law handles it: wheat is a major allergen, seitan is wheat, and the declaration has to be there. Packaged seitan says wheat on the back however little the front suggests it.

Elsewhere

On a menu there is no declaration and the aliases multiply — wheat meat, mock duck, mock chicken, vegetarian duck, mian jin, and in a great many places simply "the vegan option" with no further detail. Vegetarian Chinese, Buddhist and Japanese restaurants use it heavily, and a kitchen that makes its own has gluten dough in the air.

Ask what the protein in a vegan dish is made of rather than whether the dish has gluten in it — the second question invites a yes-or-no from somebody who may not know, while the first gets you the actual ingredient. Tofu, tempeh and edamame are soy and are fine. If a meat substitute’s label does not say gluten-free, assume it is at least partly seitan, because it very often is.

• FALCPA — wheat must be declared, so packaged seitan names it
• 21 CFR 101.91 — no gluten-free claim is available to a wheat-gluten product