Email replies

Researching allergy-friendly food sources is best done at the source, but that is not always feasible so sometimes we make a phone call or two or write emails and sometimes we rely on the product itself including our assessment of the packaging and the product itself when making recommendations.

During the decade or so that we have been managing food allergies, there have been many changes. We have a stack of older email replies from company PR and Marketing folks with a primary message of “we cannot guarantee [anything].” More recently, companies are posting food allergy information on their websites, but occasionally we still email queries to smaller companies with food allergy related questions. There are companies producing products with vague labeling such as “proprietary blend of spices” which makes the product unusable to someone with an allergy to a spice. We are not interested in the ratios of ingredients. We simply want to know all of the ingredients if we are going to use or recommend products for use by the growing number of people with food allergies.

Over the years, many of our emails have gone unanswered. Some have been answered by people who expressed genuine concern. Interestingly, we received a personalized reply to an email from Planters (a subsidiary of Kraft Foods®) that stands out as one of the most thoughtful, helpful emails in the stack. We also have rambling email responses from people who clearly should not be allowed access to company computers. When we queried one small company in Maine via email, their reply, in so many words, was, “go fly a kite.”

It is often tempting to post the exchanges with companies that reply with ignorant or downright stupid replies to food allergy questions.

We have decided for the time being to not include a not recommended list. If a company is not on the recommended list, they are not recommended.

Please tell us if you know of a food allergy friendly supplier that should be recommended. We will check them out and post accordingly.



One absolute truth is that things change. A company that does everything the right way for years might be sold to a company that doesn’t do anything the right way and the packaging looks almost the same. Always read labels.

Mmm...mmm...not good

Fifteen million pounds of Campbell Soup Company SpagettiOs were recalled in a Class I recall.  Class I is the most serious of the three class (I, II, III) categories of recall. 

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/News_&_Events/Recall_035_2010_Release/index.asp

This is serious even if you do not eat SpagettiOs.

Best test yet!

Sometimes the tests, despite a reputation for unreliable results, are accurate.

Let's go back a few years...shortly before Brooke was tested for peanut allergies at the age of two, she ate scrambled eggs for the first time.  Moments later she threw them up.  We thought nothing of it at the time.  Toddlers throw up from time to time. We have learned a lot in a decade.  At the time, food allergies were not yet widely acknowledged as an issue for our children.  We didn't know. 

We know a little bit more now, but I digress! 

Why do we test?  We test for negative results.

Today we skin tested for the usual suspects with phenomenal results.

Peanut still produced an obvious weal, but everything else was negative! 

Egg whites and Egg yolks were tested seperately.  Both were negative.

Brooke can eat eggs!

Avoiding peanuts and treenuts is still mandatory, but peanuts and treenuts are not the center of the culinary universe; eggs are.

Cake, cookies, brownies, soft boiled, hard boiled, scrambled, quiche, cupcakes, custard, omelet, egg salad, mayonaise, salad dressing, fried, poached, pancakes, batter, breads...did I mention cake?

It is a new world today.  Eggs are on the ingredients list.

Our allergist approved a food challenge.  Brooke has eaten eggs and eggs are BrookeOK.

Time to stop mocking food allergies

Link to article by Gwen Smith, editor at Allergic Living Magazine

Bravo Ms. Smith!  Well said.