Gluten-free foods, unstoppable growth trend
Gluten-free foods, unabated trend. The Italian gluten-free market promises to triple over the next decade, while by 2016 it is poised to reach a turnover of more than four and a half billion dollars ($4.64B), according to the latest report from the British research institute Visiongain, which analyzes the trend worldwide, including Italy.
Italian gluten-free food production is conducted by specialized small- to medium-sized enterprises, mainly concentrated in the north, in Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy, Veneto and Piedmont, according to the latest National Observatory on the Gluten-Free Food Sector.
Sales volumes are driven by Italian consumers with celiac disease-more than 170,000 people, up 15 percent between 2012 and 2014-but also by a broad public that chooses gluten-free foods, regardless of intolerance to this plant protein, thanks in part to the spread of questionable food fads. Abroad, demand for Italian gluten-free foods comes mainly from France, Germany and Britain in Europe and from the United States in the non-EU area.
