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.