Fake a Food Allergy? Say It Isn't So!

Butter on Vegetables

The Doctor's, a popular daytime show featuring specialty doctors dispensing medical advice, recently did a grave disservice to the food allergy community.  In a piece called, "Get Thin By Summer: 13 Secrets You Haven't Heard", tip #9 was "Fake a Butter Allergy".

Yup, you read right. In order to make sure your restaurant meal doesn't come with added butter, the doctors on the show suggest you tell a "little white lie" and say that you're allergic to butter.

Really?!?!

Not okay!

The food allergy community has come too far in educating restaurants to sit back and allow a TV show tell people it's okay to lie about a food allergy. Let's let them know that food allergies are real and we need for restaurant staff to take our allergies seriously. It looks like the only place to comment on the show is to fill out an "Ask the Doctor" form. Please take a few minutes and send a message that it's never okay to fake a food allergy.

Maybe the doctors could advise their listeners to just be truthful instead.

Technology Helps With Food Allergy Baking

An iPad  as a Souz-Chef

I picked up some Pillsbury Puff Pastry® sheets several weeks ago and promptly tossed them in the freezer and forgot about them. This week I thawed them and then had to do something with them. With my iPad on the counter, I scrolled the Pillsbury recipes and found Homestyle Chicken Pot Pie with Ham. I easily threw that together (sans ham) and was left with another thawed pastry sheet. That lead me to Chocolate Triangles- I know, sounds yummy, right?

 But darn it- how to get around the egg wash...

 Just a few touches of the iPad screen lead me to a vegan website that said I could use milk- soy, almond, cow etc. as an egg wash. It worked beautifully. Tablets make great kitchen assistants, especially when you need to check ingredients or find substitutions.

Now if we can only get them to chop and stir...

Food Allergy Recalls

Sample Food Label

 Are you getting timely recall notices from food manufacturers when a product ingredient label is incorrect? The food allergy community counts on those labels to be right and I continue to be amazed at how many recall notices I get in my email box each week. If you haven't signed up for a recall service, here are a few options:

• FAAN's Special Allergy Alert Notices
• Food Safety's Allergy Alerts
• Canadian Food Inspection Agency
• The Food Allergy Foundation
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Check them out, choose the one you like and get those email alerts so you're aware of label errors.

Best Food Resource Books for Cooking and Baking

Best Books about Food

In my quest to find safe healthy foods for our family, I've come across quite a few helpful books about the food we eat. While not food allergy books per se, these titles have helped me learn the lingo of food while guiding me to make the best choices for my family when we sit down at the table. Here are a few of my favorite go-to food reference books:

• "Animal Vegetable Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver follows Kingsolver's family through an entire year as they "live off the land". This means they only ate foods produced by people they personally knew. If all else failed, the family grew or raised their own food.
• How to Pick a Peach by Russ Parsons leads you through the choosing, care and eating of every fruit and vegetable you can imagine. It answers many questions like one of my common ones- "How do I know if that cantaloupe is ripe?". You may also want to check out his book, "How to Read a French Fry".
• I enjoy all of Michael Pollan's books, but his "In Defense of Food" really gets to the heart of things as he talks about how the more obsessed our society has become with nutrition, the less healthy we're eating. What's with that? In this book, Pollan says, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
• On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen,  Harold McGee links hard-core science with an in-depth coverage of foods and cooking techniques.
• "Cookwise" is written by chemist Shirley Corriher (also authored "Bakewise"). Corriher explains in easy to understand terms how and why things happen in cooking.

You can find any of these books at your local library and I'll also post them in the Food Allergy Assistant Store if you want to purchase any of them. Do you have any other favorite food reference books?

Food Allergy Parents Share Their Feelings

It's Food Allergy Awareness Week and what better way to inform others about what it's like to be a food allergy parent by sharing this YouTube video: Parents Speak About Their Children's Food Allergies. For my fellow food allergy parents,you'll get chills watching it because we can really relate to it. For people who don't deal with food allergies everyday, this video may help them better understand what it's like to think every day, "Please don't let anyone slip up today".

Share it on your Facebook page, send it to your email contacts, forward it to your kids' teachers. It's a powerful one.

Food Allergy Awareness Week Plans

Food Allergy Awareness Week begins May 13 and I hope that everyone will choose just one thing to help educate and spread the word about food allergies. Here's what I've got planned so far:

Welcome Home Magazine article

• On Monday May 14, my article, Challenging Journey: Food Allergies will be posted on the Family and Home Network's Facebook page.
• On Tuesday, May 15, I'll be part of the Food Allergy Twitter Party which starts at 8 pm Eastern. Food Allergy Buzz has posted some easy-to-follow information about participating in a Twitter party. I'll be using Tweetdeck that evening. Let me know if you have any questions.
• I plan to communicate with our school district's head of food services about their plans to have a Food Show at the beginning of next school year. I want to make sure they have cafeteria food ingredient information on-hand and can talk about cross contamination so our food allergy families can make safe and informed choices. 
• I'm also going to sit down and craft a letter to my representatives concerning the School Access to Emergency Epinephrine Act. My school district does stock epinephrine, but it's not a law in my home state.

What do you plan to do next week to spread the word about food allergies. It doesn't need to be huge. I've always appreciated the acronym TEAM- Together Each Accomplishes More. Let's all work together next week to bring food allergy awareness to the forefront.

Still need ideas? Check out FAAN's suggestions.

First Reaction in 14 Years

Epinephrine for Food Allergy Reaction

"Why are you telling me this?" my food allergic tween asked.

I was sharing Keith's story, "First Reaction in 14 Years", published on the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis (FAAN) website.

"I'm telling you this as a reminder to both of us of why you carry an EpiPen® everywhere you go," I responded.

I was reminding us both that an allergic reaction can happen any time, any place- even when labels are checked, hands and utensils are washed and all precautions are taken. I think when you go years without an allergic reaction, it is easy to become complacent.

• Should you turn the car around and grab the forgotten medication bag? It's just a quick trip and no one will be eating.
• Does she really need to bring her EpiPen when she's just going out to play in the neighborhood? She's only a few doors away and can get home quickly.
• Do I really want to fight the school bus company that doesn't allow self carrying of EpiPens? He won't be eating on the bus after all.

Keith's story serves as a reminder that we must always be vigilant and prepared. This is a good reminder to us and our kids that medications need to be readily available and that we shouldn't hesitate to use them if symptoms warrant.

Check out some of the other stories shared on the FAAN site and consider sharing one of your own. Who knows? Your story may be the conversation topic at someone's dinner table!

Best I.M. Healthy Soynut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever

Recipe for Soynut Butter Cookies

I used to make soynut butter cookies for my peanut allergic child. He liked them, but this peanut butter lovin' mama wasn't a big fan. When I saw that I.M. Healthy is offering a percentage of their sales to Food Allergy Initiative to celebrate food allergy Awareness Week May 13-19, I knew that I had to try again with these cookies.

I did some recipe searching and some tweaking and I'll tell you, I can't stop eating these cookies.

Seriously, someone needs to stop me!

So if you want a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie that is free of peanuts, milk and eggs that everyone will love, look no further. Buy up some extra jars of IM Healthy soynut butter during food allergy awareness week and get baking. By the way, these freeze well too...and they taste fantastic frozen...

Here's exactly what I did to make the Best Soynut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 stick Fleischmann's Unsalted margarine (only unsalted stick is dairy free)
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup IM Healthy soynut butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 tablespoon canola oil ,  1 teaspoon baking powder mixed together until bubbly (this is the substitute for one egg)
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1 cup dairy-free semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Cream together the butter, white sugar and brown sugar until smooth. Stir in the soynut butter, vanilla and water, oil baking powder mixture until well blended. Add the flour, baking soda and salt. Stir until moistened. Mix in the oats and chocolate chips until evenly distributed. Drop by tablespoonfuls on to lightly greased cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 8-10 minutes until the edges start to brown. Cool on cookie sheets for about 5 minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

Let me know how much you loved these!

Book Review: The Thriving Child

Book on Parenting Kids with Allergies and Asthma

I was recently given the opportunity to review the soon-to-be released, The Thriving Child by Erica Reid. While this is a book that covers a family's journey through the diagnosis of food allergies and asthma, it is also an advice book for any parent seeking to create a healthy family environment.

Erica Reid and her husband L.A. Reid (I'm familiar with him as a judge on Simon Cowell's X-Factor) are the parents of two children. A serious illness in their young son led them down a path to an eventual diagnosis of food allergies and asthma, Erica Reid did what many of us have done when we hear this diagnosis- she re-examined every aspect of her family's life. From the foods they ate to the items in their home, nothing was off-limits as she tried to find out what was making her son sick and what would keep him healthy. The Reid family made many changes. This book describes that journey and what they learned along the way.

The style of "The Thriving Child" is conversational and non-judgmental. The author is quick to point out that she knows the changes she made in her family won't work for everyone, but she hopes readers can pick out things to try that may work in their family.

The Reids' journey will sound familiar to many food allergy families- varying diagnoses from different doctors, too many medications hastily ordered by doctors to fix symptoms and a suspicion that everything is making your child sick. Erica tracked down experts- doctors, a macrobiotic guru, Erica's own 5th grade teacher (I love that they are still in touch!)- and their knowledge is shared throughout this book. Another fun aspect of the book is the celebrity parenting tips that begin each chapter. Hearing from fellow parents like Melissa Ethridge, Holly Robinson Peete and Gayle King shows that all parents face challenges and that we all just want what is best for our families.

The Thriving Child is scheduled to be released May 8, 2012. If you're looking to re-energize and re-vamp your family's life, Erica may provide just the boost you need to get started.