As indicated in an earlier post on our change to take sesame off of our labels, I had indicated that there would be other small changes to the ingredients as well.  These are the changes that you need to be aware of although they will not change any of the top food allergen declarations:

Sugar:   Currently we use a soft brown sugar that is made of cane juice but is refined.  In the new ingredient formulas, this ingredient will be changed to evaporated cane juice which is unrefined.

Chocolate Chips:  Although we are still finalizing this change, if all goes as expected, the new chocolate chips will have the anhydrous dextrose (corn based) removed and an additional ingredient, salt, will be added.  The 70% dark chocolate chunks will remain the same.

Crisp rice:  Not only will the sesame warning be removed due to the new crisp rice, the addition of honey as an ingredient (rice flour, rice bran, raisin juice concentrate, honey, salt), will mean that Nonuttin granola bars and granolas will now no longer be considered vegan as honey is considered an animal by-product. 

As indicated in the Say Goodbye to Sesame post, here are the details about which labels are changing with expected dates:

We will be moving to the new labels for the USA only at first.  This should take place within the next 8-10 weeks and will occur with all of the granola bars and clusters at the same time.

Canadian labels are expected to be changed within the next 4-6 months.  Why?  Health Canada has been promising changes to the allergen and gluten labeling for some time but most recently they have indicated that the new regulations will be posted in Spring 2010 which could be all the way until June.  So that we can make sure that we meet all new regulations, we will be waiting on Canadian packaging changes until those announcements take place.

In the meantime, be sure to read your Nonuttin labels.  If it still has the sesame warning on it, the formula is still containing the current crisp rice, NOT the new.  All new labels will only say:  Contains: soy (chocolate varieties) or May Contain:  soy (fruit varieties).

It has been a wild and crazy weekend on the Nonuttin’ front.  Actually, it started about 2 weeks ago when our long planned separation of the Nonuttin’ website into Canadian and American sites began counting down to the actual split which began on Friday. 

It all began as a wonderful idea with all sorts of plans of how the sites would look, how they would function, what writing would need to be different and more.  I began learning more than I wanted to know about search engine optimization and how much re-writing I would have to do of many parts of the website and product pages so that the search engines wouldn’t see duplicate content.  Then the writing began and it’s been an ongoing process for 2 weeks.  Blech!  So much for all of the glamour.

We’re almost there.  You may have noticed that the site has been down temporarily since Friday and since we’re still not done despite working through the weekend, it will be down at least Monday as well.  But…

I’m really thrilled with the 2 stores with 2 separate currencies and the cleaner look.   While many US customers who are close to the Canadian border are familiar with Canadian currency, we were confusing a lot of Americans with how they would be charged.  Not a problem any longer!

We’ve also set up shipping charges that are clear cut BEFORE you start your order and we’re offering the lowest FREE shipping amount we’ve ever offered:  $125!  I’m sure that will make many of you happy.  Cherry fruit chips have been permanently reduced and Canadians can finally see their t-shirts  and lunch kits again since they were removed due to US  Customs issues.

If I can only see the computer screen from my red-tinged blurry eyes, a newsletter will be coming out in the next few days to those who don’t subscribe to our RSS Feed outlining all of the changes (argh, more writing).  Maybe I’ll put my head down on the computer keyboard for just a minute, it looks kind of comfortable, the keys are flatter than I thought, zsdfzdfzdfzdfkjdszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz