Birthday Club Benefits Autism Speaks

Bob's Red Mill has teamed up with Autism Speaks to provide a birthday gift to kids. A $30 donation to Autism Speaks assures a birthday kit for a special child. 

Bob's Red Mill offers many gluten-free and food allergy friendly products. Their malted barley flour is a great additive for my rolls and pizza dough. It gets the yeast I add into my recipes all excited for a higher dough rise. I also keep a bag of their flax seed meal in my freezer for a quick egg substitute in some of my baked goods. All of their products are available online, but I can usually find Bob's Red Mill at my grocery store. 

If Autism Speaks is an organization near and dear to your heart and you know a child who would love to get a gift package fit for a rising chef, sign up for the club.

Don't Miss the July Food Allergy Blog Carnival

Dairy and Egg Free Cake!

Be sure to check out this month's Food Allergy Blog Carnival. It's filled with articles, recipes and reviews. Our host even created a Pinterest board filled with the carnival submissions. Great fun!

Iron Chef and Food Allergies

Iron Chef Challenge

Food allergy mom Susan McArthur has challenged the Iron Chefs: Create a meal free of the top 8 allergens (plus corn!). That's a tall order even for those of us who have been dealing with multiple food allergies for many years! Susan's daughter Samantha, an aspiring chef herself, deals with a rare (although the rates are raising alarmingly) incurable white blood cell disease called Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EoE). She receives nourishment through a feeding tube.

Samantha and her mom have started an online petition to bring awareness to EoE. They are looking for 1000 signatures in the hope that the Iron Chefs will accept the challenge. At last count they had 955 signatures. Will you add your name to the petition? Get the details and help Samantha make her dream come true.

Food Allergies and the 2012 Olympics

While we prepare to enjoy the upcoming Summer Olympic Games in London, caterers are busy preparing for the 14 million meals that will be served during the 17-day event. Athletes will consume 1.2 million of those meals, which will include dishes for special dietary needs such as Kosher, low salt and allergens.

The remaining meals will be served to spectators through restaurants and food stalls. The UK Anaphylaxis Campaign confirms that people with special dietary needs can bring their own food into the venues, but advises also bringing a medical note to cover both the food and any medications.

Opening ceremonies kick-off the Games on Friday, July 27. If you're looking for more information about the sporting events and how to make sure you don't miss your favorites, check out my article, What to Expect for the 2012 London Summer Olympics. 

Let the Games begin!

Teen Makes Eating out With Food Allergies a Little "EZier"

Eating out with Food Allergies

I first wrote about 16-year-old Emily in July 2009. At the time, the industrious 13-year-old had launched EZgreetings and was donating a portion of her proceeds to food allergy research. 


Emily is at it again with a new site in her EZnetwork. This one is designed to help people with food allergies navigate restaurant menus. EZeatings provides links to over 50 (and counting) restaurant menus. Whether at home or on the road, finding ingredient information from major chain restaurants just got a whole lot easier.


Check out Emily's new site, and use the "Expand EZeatings" tab to recommend more restaurant menus, or to find a letter you can use to ask favorite restaurants to provide important ingredient and allergen information. 


You can also "EZily" find EZeatings in the resource section of Food Allergy Assistant. When eating out, always be sure to make the restaurant staff aware of your allergens and confirm ingredients and preparation techniques with the manager or chef. EZeatings, combined with direct communication, will go along way in making restaurant dining more palatable for people with food allergies. 

Food Allergies Around the World

Rice Allergy in Japan

I continue to be fascinated by the differing degrees of food allergy among various countries and ethnicities. It seems like there must be some clues to the food allergy puzzle in the studies that reveal food allergy differences among groups of people.

Take a look at this map:

 
(Map from Current Allergy & Clinical Immunology, August 2009 Vol 22, No. 3)


While there are many commonalities, why is buckwheat a big allergen in China or why is beef a big one in Chile'?

Just this week, research was published that shows a higher rate of food allergy among Israeli adolescents compared to Britain teens. According to a recent study conducted by the Rabin Medical Center allergy clinic, 3.6 percent of Israeli teens have a food allergy, compared with 2.6 percent of British teens. Milk is the most common allergy among adolescents in Israel. Peanut allergy in Israel is lower than that of the rate in the US, but higher than the rate in Singapore and the Philippines.It's also interesting that Arab adolescents are 40 percent less likely to be allergic to milk than their Jewish counterparts, but Arab teens in Israel are much more likely to be allergic to eggs, peanuts and sesame.

What is the thread that connects people with food allergies and what are the boundary lines that separate them?

Aahh...if we could answer that question, I suspect we may be well on our way to solving the puzzle.


A decade ago, I remember reading that while peanut allergy was common in the US, it was very uncommon in Japan. Conversely, rice allergy, almost unheard of in the US, was then a common food allergy in Japan. We also know that fish allergy is more common in countries where fish consumption is high, like Scandinavia and Norway.

White Album Puzzle

This all gets even trickier when study results show that there are different patterns to food allergy in different parts of the world. people in different countries, react to different parts of proteins in foods like peanuts. 

This is like the The Beatles- White Album puzzle. Highly challenging, but not impossible. Here's hoping we see more international studies to help put the pieces together.