When I started my gluten-free diet, I was dying to know if CLIF Bars were gluten-free! I was dismayed, however, to find out that CLIF Bars would be gluten free if they didn’t have the one gluten-containing ingredient in them: barley malt extract.
Barley malt extract comes from (you guessed it!) barley, which is one of the three main gluten grains of wheat, barley and rye.
Second, the oats used in CLIF Bars may not be gluten-free oats. This doesn’t mean that oats in general have gluten, because oats are a gluten-free grain, but in the storing process, if oats are stored with other gluten-containing grains, they become cross-contaminated.
CLIF Bars are not certified nor marked gluten-free.
If you are on a gluten-free diet or looking for ways to decrease gluten in your diet, you should avoid CLIF bars. You can also discover more about the ingredients in CLIF Bars by reading the package, either online or in a store.
If you have other allergies such as peanuts or soy, watch out for various CLIF bars too, because most CLIF products contain soy protein isolate and several contain peanuts, peanut flour and peanut butter.