Gluten Free in Bolivia

Bolivia is one of the more challenging countries to travel through as a celiac. When eating out, there are naturally gluten free dishes, but the level of cross-contamination is high, and wheat flour finds its way to a surprising number of items. If cooking for yourself, naturally gluten free food is readily available in the markets, and some gluten free substitute items are even available in city supermarkets.

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Contents

• Personal Experience
• Gluten Awareness
• Eating Out
• Groceries
• Our Meals
• Phrases to Remember
• FAQs
• To Summarise

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Personal Experience

We spent a month in Bolivia, and from both a gluten free perspective and a people perspective, it was by far the most challenging country we visited in South America. We travelled across the Altiplano - the high, dry plateau - where towns are remote, ingredients are limited, and eating out as a celiac can be difficult.

In our experience, gluten-related questions were rarely understood, and restaurants didn’t tend to engage with them. Most of the time we ended up cooking for ourselves, but even then, the availability of gluten free staples was limited, which made variety hard to come by. On the occasions we did eat out, we often had to choose the “least risky” item on the menu and hope for the best, with mixed results.

Bolivia has incredible landscapes, and we met travellers who had great experiences, especially in the lowlands and tropical regions. But for strictly gluten free travel, the country requires extra preparation, patience, and a willingness to cook for yourself, or take a risk.

But fear not. We learnt a lot, and by the end of the month we had got our gluten free eating sorted. So, here’s our practical advice for surviving Bolivia as a celiac. Hopefully the mistakes we made help you to not get as glutened as we did.

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Gluten Awareness

There is a low awareness of celiac disease across the country. In rural areas, it is very unlikely that people have heard of celiac disease, or a gluten free diet. Often when communicating your needs, you have to explicitly explain what gluten is, and which food items contain it. The one exception is in the larger cities, where some restaurants include gluten free options on their menus.

There is no govenment celiac program, and it is thought that there is a high rate of undiagnosed people living in the country with the disease.

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Eating Out

Eating out certainly posed its challenges. Before we dive in, there are a few important things to mention:

• Soy sauce is an annoyingly common ingredient in restaurant food.
• Bolivian food tends to consist of some kind of meat accompanied with rice, potato and some vegetables. Sometimes the meat is breaded or battered. Sometimes the meat contains hidden wheat, particularly sausages.
• Wheat flour finds its way into sauces, marinades, soups and fryers.

Step 1 – Entering the Restaurant

The first stage of eating out is to actually be accepted in a restaurant. You can be refused entry as a foreigner. Even if you quietly enter, be polite and smile; the waiter will sometimes see your foreign face and shout “NO” while pointing to the door. It doesn’t happen frequently, but I thought I’d mention it, just so you’re prepared and don’t get caught out like us.

Step 2 – Finding out What is Gluten Free

Well done, you’ve made it in. Now time to decipher the menu and figure out what your best options are. If you have a working knowledge of Spanish, but can’t understand any of the items on the menu, then you’re not alone.

In the tables below are the most common Bolivian dishes, split out into those that are and are not naturally gluten free. We’ve also created a complete list of Bolivian restaurant dishes, split out into gluten free and gluten-containing, to help out the next time you’re in a Bolivian restaurant.

Naturally Gluten Free Dishes

Name	What is it?	Risks
Majadito	Rice with dried meat, tomatoes, onions and fried eggs	Occasionally made with soy sauce.
Sopa de maní	Peanut soup, sometimes with meat	Flour as a thickener (low risk)
Trucha a la plancha	Fried trout, with potato, rice and salad	The trout is sometimes battered
Picante de pollo	Spicy chicken soup	None
Pique macho	Beef, sausage, chips, peppers and onions	The sausage could contain wheat, although this is rare
Lomo montado / bistec a lo pobre	Steak, egg, rice, fries salad	None
Pollo a la brasa	Rotisserie Chicken	None
Sopa de Qqinua	Quinoa soup	Sometimes thickened with flour
Papas a la huancaína	Potatoes in a chilli-cheese sauce	Sometimes flour in the sauce

Dishes to Avoid

Name	What is it?
Salteñas	Pastries filled with vegetables and potato
Empanadas	Fried dough with meat or cheese fillings
Milanesa	Breaded and fried meat, served with rice, potato and vegetables
Pollo broaster	Battered chicken
Buñuelos	Sweet, fried dough balls

Other Things to Watch Out For

If you want to maximise your chances of not getting glutened with what should be a naturally gluten free dish, always talk to the server. The phrases in the Phrases to Remember section are useful for this, as is a gluten free card.

The fryers are almost always full of gluten. Assume anything that goes into them does not come out gluten free. The chance of cross contamination is very high. It is likely you will get glutened. If this isn’t something you want to risk, cooking for yourself is the best option.

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Groceries

Outside of the cities, your location for buying food is the market and small convenience stores dotted around villages.

The Markets

The markets are vibrant places, full of stalls with big colourful sacks containing masses of fresh produce. They’re often divided into sections: fruit & veg, meat, dried fruit and nuts, spices and dry goods.

As you can imagine, the price for goods is made up on the spot, with some sellers adding a hefty surcharge for foreigners. The products were still cheaper than buying them in Europe.

Sellers weigh their produce in pounds (“libra in Spanish”), not kilos. One pound is 0.45 kg.

Fruit & Veg

These stalls were great: full of big, fresh, and brightly coloured food. Most of the produce is grown in the tropical lowlands so is available all year around.

The veg selection includes: potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash (these are massive, you ask for a chunk to be cut off), peppers, tomatoes, onions, cucumber, lettuce, cabbage, spinach, chard, carrot, beetroot and celery.

Fruits include bananas, mangoes, avacados, oranges, papayas, passion fruit (maracuyá), pineapple. The quality of the fruit is so good compared to in Europe, make the most of it during your trip!

Bolivian avocados are massive, like bigger than my head. One of our go-to meals was to make flatbreads from maize flour and dip then in a big bowl of guacamole made from one of these avocados.

Dry Food Stalls

The dried food stalls sell a variety of flours. You will usually find some naturally gluten free ones: maize, cassava and quinoa flours. These are versatile flours and can be used to make all sorts of gluten free breads and soups. Be wary of cross contamination though, the flours are all sold from sacks, positioned next to each other. There’s nothing to stop the gluten-containing flours finding their way into the gluten-free ones. It’s not uncommon for the same scoop to be used for every sack of flour too.

These also sell rice and wheat-based pastas, along with dried beans, legumes and chuños. You can usually find packaged rice in the convenience shops too which negates the cross-contamination risks.

Spice Stalls

You can find some real treasures in these stalls: whole spices, a range of dried chillis, and a good selection of spice powders and leaves. We often visited these in search of a way to spice-up our otherwise bland camping meals.

Dried Fruits Stalls

These would be our go-to place for gluten free snacks in Bolivia. They usually had a good range, including walnuts, peanuts, monkey nuts, almonds, seed mixes and Brazil nuts. The dried fruit options were usually raisins, dried banana, apple, pineapple and mango. Salted toasted maize was available too and also made for a good snack.

Butchers

Butchers are split out into chicken, beef, pork and llama. All parts of the animals are sold; nothing is off limits.

Convenience Shops

We didn’t find convenience stalls to be of much use. They sell some expensive snack food (crisps, sweets etc) in small quantities, stock cubes and tins of chopped tomatoes. The rest is biscuits, bread and other gluten containing items. They never sold gluten free substitute items.

I struggled to find chocolate that wasn’t ridiculously expensive in the towns and villages. By the end of the month, the withdrawal symptoms had started to subside.

Supermarkets

Supermarkets can only be found in the large cities. The only real chain is Hipermaxi. Other local brands available in some cities are: Fidalga, IC Norte, Ketal and Tia.

We found the occasional gluten free item in supermarkets. All gluten free items were imported from Argentina, and carried the Sin TACC logo. As a result, they were also more expensive than in Argentina, and expensive compared to European prices to.

Stock up on supplies in the cities
If you’re planning on travelling to the rural regions, I would recommend stocking up on gluten free items and snacks in a city. The supermarkets offer relatively cheap naturally gluten free snack food. The non-perishables are cheaper than in the convenience stalls and markets of the towns and villages.

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Our Meals

Camping

We cooked for ourselves most days. Camping meals included:

• Vegetable stews – a mixture of whatever vegetables we got our hands on, some spices, and potato. An uninspiring dish.
• Rice based one pot dishes
• Maize breads with guacamole or salsa.

I won’t lie, we did struggle to keep ourselves full as we cycled across the country. The lack of gluten free snack food didn’t help with this, and we both lost weight. With a kitchen, and eating out more, we could definitely have fed ourselves better.

In Accommodation

When staying in accommodation, the cooking got better. We could make dishes like roast chicken. Roasted food never tasted so good! We also had a go at making brownies, replacing wheat flour with maize flour. The results were surprisingly good.

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Phrases to Remember

Spanish	English
Harina de maíz	Maize flour
Harina de cassava	Cassava flour
Harina de quinoa	Quinoa flour
! Arroz	Rice
Sin gluten	Gluten free
No puedo comer trigo o cebada	I cannot eat wheat or barley
Hay harina de trigo o salsa de soja en esto?	Is there wheat flour or soy sauce in this?
¿Puede ser sin harina ni salsa de soja, por favor?	Can it be made without wheat flour or soy sauce?
Hay trigo en el chorizo?	Is there wheat in the sausages?

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FAQs

What are gluten free snacks in Bolivia?

• In rural areas, gluten free snacks include dried fruits and nuts, available in the markets, toasted maize and crisps.
• In the cities, the same items are available in the markets, plus the occasional gluten free biscuit, cake and chocolate in the supermarkets.

Is Bolivia safe for people with celiac disease?

Bolivia can be challenging for people with celiac disease. Naturally gluten free foods are widely available, but awareness of celiac disease is low and cross-contamination is common when eating out. Travellers who are highly sensitive to gluten should plan to cook for themselves most of the time.

Do Bolivians understand what gluten is?

In most of Bolivia, especially rural areas, people are unfamiliar with gluten and celiac disease. You will often need to explain what gluten is and which foods contain it. Awareness is slightly better in larger cities, where some restaurants list gluten free options.

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To Summarise

• Eating out as a celiac is difficult, and there is a high chance you will get glutened. Naturally gluten-free dishes exist, but cross-contamination is common.

• Gluten-free substitute items are hard to find, especially outside cities. You have to rely on naturally gluten-free foods.

BBolivia is an incredibly interesting country to visit, but it does come with real gluten-related challenges. Choosing meals carefully, talking clearly to servers, and cooking for yourself are the best ways to limit your chances of getting glutened. In my opinion, the rewards of visiting Bolivia outweigh the potential risk of getting glutened.

Final thing, if you find yourself at the Salar de Uyuni, you have to check out the abandoned trains located at -20.507, -66.860.