Julian Bakery Whistleblower Starts New Website

For those of you who wonder how much you can trust the labeling on Low Carb foods, here’s a cautionary tale from Deborah Krueger, who became so suspicious of the “low-carb” breads from Julian Bakery, she started testing them on herself . . . and more:

“I decided to buy a loaf of Smart Carb#1 at my local Whole Foods Market and test my diabetic self.   After testing I became increasingly angry.  I found a national food testing laboratory here in Portland, OR and took the bread in to be analyzed.  On July 7^th, 2012 I got the results back from the lab-only 6g protein, a whopping 23g carbohydrate and only 6g fiber for a net 17g carbohydrate.  (See Krueger Smart Carb#1 under Test Results #1)  Wow, even I was surprised.  Instead of the stated 2g net carbs-I had ingested 34g net carbs.  I normally try to keep my total daily carbohydrate intake at between 30g to 35g.  As a diabetic who takes no medication of any kind, controlling my blood glucose levels strictly by diet, this mis-representation of carbohydrate was poison.

After much research, and spurred by anger, I sent my first E-mail to Heath Squier at Julian Bakery June 25^th, 2012.  (See Krueger-Squier June 25^th, 2012 under E-Mails #1)  On the same day I also mailed an information packet and cover letter (similar to the e-mail sent to Heath Squire but minus the list of everyone I named in his e-mail) to every person, newspaper, news media and every Whole Foods executive listed.

On July 30^th, 2012 I filed my first complaint with the FDA. 

You can find out more at Deborah Krueger’s website.  As some followup, early in October, I contacted Heath Squire, at Julian Bakery, regarding Deborah Krueger’s allegations and even sent him testing results from the lab that Deborah used.  Here was Heath Squire’s reply, from early October:

From: Julian Bakery Sales <julianbakerysales@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 4, 2012 7:48 AM
Subject: Re: Tests of your bread products at ####

Shelley,

  Thank you for sending this information over to us as I had not seen this before. We pride ourselves in helping people reach optimal health and want to ensure out labels are accurate. We are a smaller family owned company and my mother Barbara Squier is the owner of our company. Barbara is on vacation until next Tuesday so I will be inquiring further when she comes back about the formulations for Purity and Manna. Barbara made the recipes for Manna and Purity many years ago and used calculations based on the ingredients to create the labels. The new breads that I have formulated all been lab tested like Paleo, Carb Zero, and Smart Carb. If there is some sort of discrepancy with Purity and Manna I am unaware of it and I will have to send these breads to our Medallion labs to be tested. If there is a change to be made to the label we will make it after our results come back. This process will take some time to complete.   Thank You,

That was the response from Heath Squire of Julian Baker.  I have not yet heard back from Heath Squire about what he has determined about Deborah Krueger’s allegations.  The lack of response is similar to what happened when a Type 1 Diabetic I know had similar issues with Julian Bakery breads last Spring, which we reported about here.

I have sent Heath Squire another email to see if he has any updates regarding whether he has now paid to get official tests for more of his breads, as the company that makes the bread.  Note that the citizen activist Deborah Krueger paid to have these breads tested herself, and she has had the results for some time now.  This creates a puzzle.  If a citizen, Deb Krueger, can get these breads tested fairly promptly, why can’t the manufacturer of the breads, the group who earns profits by describing them as low carb, get the tests done promptly?  If they are being honest about an intention to have their breads tested, what is leading to the delay?