Avoiding sulphur

Out of all the things that I'm allergic to, sulphur seems to be the most difficult to work around. Avoiding ingesting sulphur generally means to avoid all dried fruits, vinegar, wine, or any food that contains these ingredients. I'm sure that this list is not exhaustive either, as I seem to find more and more products with the sulphur preservative (typically 223, but can be anything in the preservative range of 220-228). If you think about handling this in the simplest form, you'd eat fresh fruit rather than anything dried, avoid vinegar or anything preserved, and avoid wine. When cooking, you can generally substitute any ingredients that are not suitable, but how do you substitute dessicated or shredded coconut? I'm not one for buying a whole coconut and shredding the "meat" myself, and coconut cream doesn't work if you need the coconut to be dry. So, over the past few months, each time I've gone to the supermarket or health food store, I've looked for shredded coconut that does not contain sulphur. All the regular brands contain sulphur, which is incredibly frustrating, as sulphur is the preservative used to, well, "preserve" the coconut. I also tried Googling it, but I never came up with any results.  


Being the persistent person I am, I searched the grocery store shelves again tonight and I found it! It was an expensive small packet of organic coconut flakes, but as it's the only one I've found since I started looking months ago, I bought it. The brand? Honest to Goodness. I'm not one to generally buy organic products just because they're organic, but this one won me over as it clearly stated on the front "no added sulphur". The brand prides itself in having nothing artifical - so that means no preservatives, colours, additives, flavours or sweeteners, and it's not GMO. (The coconut flakes taste fantastic too, and I was tempted to just eat a good handful before putting them into the pantry.) They have a decent range of products available online too, if your grocery store don't stock their products. For more information, go to the Goodness website. They're based in Sydney; I'm not sure if they can ship internationally, as I haven't checked.


Before you head over to that site though, I must warn you that their products may have traces of gluten in it, so if you're highly allergic to gluten, then you may have to avoid their products. Thankfully, I don't react as badly to traces of gluten, as I do to traces of sulphur.


So now I can go back to making things like coconut slice for myself and my family. If only I could find a substitute for cheese, because making a pizza without cheese just doesn't hit the spot.