Perfecting gluten-free foods: overview
- European gluten-free sales are forecast to exceed $10bn by 2031
- Consumers want products that are safe, tasty and widely available
- Clean-label demand is creating new challenges for manufacturers
- Bread remains the toughest gluten-free product to perfect
- Future innovation is focused on nutrition, ingredients and biotech
Gluten-free (GF) is big business.
The European GF foods and beverages market is expected to grow from $6.64bn in 2025 to $7.12bn in 2026, and is forecast to reach $10.38 billion by 2031, according to Mordor Intelligence.
New products are arriving into the space at pace, with major brands entering the category. Iconic Australian snack Arnott’s Shapes have just arrived in UK supermarkets in a GF version and Campbell’s in the US recently launched a GF version of its famous Goldfish crackers, stating that it was “one of the most requested innovations in the brand’s history”.
But as the category moves into the mainstream, manufacturers face a challenge: making products that are safe, nutritious and affordable without sacrificing taste and texture.
While GF foods are “closely associated with health claims and beliefs, many contain highly refined flour, are lower in fibre, and are high on the glycaemic index”, according to a 2024 study. “In comparison with regular food items, they are often inferior in taste and texture. To make up for this shortcoming, manufacturers may add fats, sugars, or other ingredients to their gluten-free products. These factors, and their very high price point, are said to be hindering the growth of the European gluten-free food market.”
Who are the consumers?
Mordor attributes sector growth to increasing diagnosis of coeliac disease (an autoimmune disorder in which the lining of the gut is damaged when exposed to wheat, barley or rye), growing adoption of wellness-focused lifestyles, and the rapid expansion of e-commerce.
In 2024, the prevalence of biopsy-confirmed coeliac disease in Europe was 0.8%, while screening identified diagnostic markers in 1.3% of the population, according to Mordor. The incidence of coeliac disease is increasing at an annual rate of 7.5%, driven by the adoption of proactive testing protocols.
However, the consumer base has extended well beyond those with coeliac to include those with non-coeliac gluten sensitivity.
In 2024, the prevalence of this in Europe was 12%, with 40% adhering to gluten-free diets, says Mordor. This consumer segment focuses on symptom relief rather than strict compliance and will tolerate occasional cross-contamination.
And, last but certainly not least, there are those who buy gluten-free as a lifestyle choice, and these consumers usually buy GF tied in with organic or allergen-free foods.
What do GF consumers really want?
For people with coeliac, safety is paramount.
“They’re after a safe product, something they can eat that won’t cause a reaction and make them sick,” says Frank Vriesekoop, professor in food biotechnology at Harper Adams University. The European Union has a regulatory baseline for gluten-related claims to ensure that this is the case – under this framework, products using a ‘gluten-free’ claim must contain no more than 20 mg/kg (ppm) gluten.
“Beyond that, most want a product that tastes and has the physical properties of the product that they used to consume,” says Professor Vriesekoop. “Bread and pasta are a focus because these are products in which gluten plays an enormously important role to get that the structure and the eating experience.”
Easy availability is also high on the agenda.
The 2024 study looked at gluten-free consumers across 13 European countries and found that caregivers of those on a GF diet had the highest purchasing frequency for most of the gluten-free offerings, and were the least satisfied with quality and availability. They experienced more problems with availability and engaged in more coping strategies to obtain the products they need.
Clean label and gluten-free
To create a convincing product, GF brands often have to use a long list of ingredients. And in the era of increasing clean-label demand, this might start to become a problem.
Professor Vriesekoop believes there is room for cleaner-label gluten-free products, but while some ingredients could certainly be taken out, there are trade-offs, including cost.
“It is possible to balance palatability and clean label, but it all depends how much are consumers are willing to pay for the product,” he says.
For a start, fewer ingredients makes for a shorter shelf-life. “A shorter shelf-life makes products more expensive,” he says. “A large proportion of the population is not awash with money, so I don’t think it makes sense in the current climate to push for clean labels.”
He is also clear that education about ingredients is vital. A longer list doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re harmful to health. “Many people that buy GF products have a degree of worry about the long lists of additives because they don’t understand them,” he says.
A GF bread is never going to have the same simple ingredients list as a loaf of sourdough because manufacturers have to replace the functions of gluten. “They want to put a product on the market where they get the lowest amount of complaints about taste and texture.”
Agentic commerce may also be a challenge for the sector.
When AI starts to do more shopping for consumers, GF products may run into problems as the agents look for clean label. “I think some gluten-free products will, for a substantial amount of time into the future, still appear as ultra-processed foods because of the additional additives,” says Professor Vriesekoop.
Bread is the GF frontier
Bread is one of the hardest products to replicate.
“There’s nothing that does the same thing in bread as gluten,” says Professor Vriesekoop. “We’ve been monitoring gluten-free consumers in the UK for over a decade now and the complaint that some GF bread tastes like cardboard always comes back.”
It is possible to create bread with good taste and texture, and fewer additives, but it’s harder to produce at scale because the shelf-life is much shorter than commercially produced breads.
Tara Taylor, founder of UK brand Good Grain Breads, knows this to be true. When she had to eliminate gluten from her diet, she didn’t like the commercial offerings and set about creating her own version.
”I taught myself how to bake backwards,” she says, starting out by creating loaves with common additives such as xanthan gum and hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (a commonly used additive for improving elasticity, stability, volume and moisture retention in commercial GF breads), and then removing them and experimenting with different grains in various ratios.
At first, she sold her loaves locally but they became so popular, she turned it into a brand that’s now sold in the UK in retailers such as Wholefoods Market and Ocado.
“Scaling has been awful,” she says. “Baking one or two loaves of bread at home is not the same as baking 100 to 200 loaves.”
She developed recipes with scale in mind, but even then, there is no easy way to increase shelf life. The bread is organic and made without oils, gums, additives and preservatives, and allergens. Even the output can be slower as it’s hard to keep the additive-free dough from sticking to the equipment.
Alongside that comes compliance with regulations and traceability requirements, all of which add cost. The price point is higher than breads produced by large-scale manufacturers, but “there is a cap – people aren’t willing to pay £8 for a loaf of bread”.
The bread is denser than some commercial offerings and “some people don’t want to pay for it; they want that aerated, fluffy bread that lasts for days”, but ultimately, there are enough that do want it to make a viable business. “We’re still going,” says Taylor. “We’re on our next round of scale up. That shows that there is a demand for it. People are becoming more aware of what’s in their food.”
Whether it’s commercial or smaller scale, bread is thriving. Bakery products accounted for 45% of the European gluten-free market value in 2025, according to Mordor.
GF brand Dr Schär leads the sector across Europe, with Warburtons in the UK and Promise based in Ireland also strong. Some US brands are sold in Europe, such as the flours made by Bob’s Red Mill.
Acquisitions are also strengthening the market. In September 2026, Airos Delicatessen, a Spanish gluten-free bakery specialist, merged with Valencian breakfast-cereal producer Esgir, which produces gluten-free, sugar-free, and lactose-free breakfast cereals.
“There are more producers on the market now. That means that it has actually provided its own competition. And with that, the quality has improved.”
Frank Vriesekoop, professor in food biotechnology at Harper Adams University
Progress has been made
The taste and texture of GF food has improved significantly in the past decade as the proliferation of GF brands and products has driven innovation and quality. “There are more producers on the market now,” says Professor Vriesekoop. “That means that it has actually provided its own competition. And with that, the quality has improved.”
Huge progress has also been made in availability. “If we take the four big UK supermarkets, 10 years ago, they all had a section with gluten-free products and they had around 80 gluten-free stock keeping units (SKUs),” says Professor Vriesekoop. “That has now increased to around 400.”
The future of gluten-free
The question now is where the next stage of innovation heads.
There are currently two strands of innovation in the GF sector. First is cleaner label alternatives to the current additives, such as the 2026 launch by Danish company Ferm Food of a fermented binder based on buckwheat and fava beans.
The other is biotech innovations aimed at neutralising the gluten in food and drink, such as Prozymi Labs in the UK developing enzymes that neutralise the dangerous parts of gluten, meaning it would preserve the taste, aroma, and texture people associate with bread. Mordor predicts that beverages are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.12% through 2031, marking the fastest growth among product types, and this is mainly driven by GF beer innovation by biotech companies.
The other shift that’s happening, though, is a drive to improve the nutritional value of GF foods.
“The direction we’re going to go in is nutrition – ensuring that GF foods have enough proteins, fibre and micronutrients,” says Professor Vriesekoop.
Wheat, rye and barley are nutrient-dense, and without them, GF products can lack nutrients such as fibre and certain vitamins. And the same food regulations don’t apply to GF. For example, in the UK, non-wholemeal wheat flour must include calcium carbonate, iron, niacin and thiamin (and folic acid from 13 December 2026). “That same law doesn’t apply to the cereal composition for gluten-free products,” says Professor Vriesekoop.
This drive towards optimising nutrition is happening in academia as well as in the industry. For example, a 2026 study successfully developed gluten-free cereal bars that were nutritionally optimised and treated with a technology called cold plasma treatment to extend shelf-life.
Overall, GF has come a long way and what was once a niche category is booming, but delivering on consumer demands for safe, delicious and nutritious without pushing up cost will require ongoing innovation and a careful balancing of priorities.
