Chicken-less Eggs Benefit People With Egg Allergy

 Beyond Eggs may be just what the doctor ordered for egg allergic consumers. For those of us in my family not allergic to eggs, I spend the extra money for free-range eggs, as I don't want to contribute to the practice of hens in tiny cages. Finally there's an alternative that deals with the egg allergy and the humane issues.

A report on NPR's "All Things Considered" caught my attention last week. "Why Bill Gates is Investing in Chicken-less Eggs", talked about how Hampton Creek Foods has come up with a plant-based substitute for eggs. 

Why mess with Mother Nature, you ask? Well, there is growing concern that in the coming decades the demand for animal meat and by-products will surpass the supply. In addition, these substitute eggs:

• reduce our carbon footprint
• are less expensive
• have no risk of salmonella
• contain no cholesterol
• and, most important to me, are safe for those with egg allergies. They are also free of soy, lactose and gluten.

In a recent taste test, cookies baked with chicken eggs were compared to cookies baked with Beyond Eggs. Tasters did not notice a difference. And watch this video using Beyond Eggs to make scrambled eggs.

I did contact Hampton Fooods to inquire about nutrition information and I am very pleased with the response. Chicken eggs and Beyond Eggs are pretty comparable in terms of protein. Beyond Eggs also contains a good amount of calcium, less fat and no cholesterol.   
 
While I've adapted many of my recipes and find a mixture of baking soda, oil and water to work in many of my homemade cookies and cakes, I love the idea of this nutrition boost and I'm hopeful that Beyond Eggs will work in some of the recipes I've had to abandon for now (traditional brownies, pound cake and angel food cake to name a few).

Check out Hampton Food's Facebook and Twitter pages to keep up 

with the release date and latest news. It's eggcellent (insert groan 

here) news and I can't wait to try it out!

Annual Meeting of ACAAI Always Delivers

Spice Allergy

While I don't attend the annual meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), I always look forward to the information that comes out of it. This year we learned more about food allergies. Did you see these headlines from the conference?

• Living with Spice Allergies
• Higher Family Income Linked to Higher Peanut Allergy Rates
• Baked Egg Tolerance
• Epinephrine Use Under-Utilized by Paramedics
• More Allergists are Using Twitter

You can catch up on all the tweets from the annual meeting that wrapped up on November 13. Check out the program guide for a complete listing of all events and sessions. From "Getting Comfortable With Off-the-Beaten-Track Food Allergies" to "Food Allergy: Controversies in Diagnosis" the field of food allergy got a lot of attention at this year's conference.

Food Allergy Research Boost With Multi-Million Dollar Grant

Milk Allergy

Perhaps you've read the news that David H. Koch, Executive Vice President of Koch Industries, has donated 10 million dollars to the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at The Mount Sinai Medical Center. This donation, one of the largest in the Institute's history, will create the David H. and Julia Koch Research Program in Food Allergy Therapeutics.

This is great news for the food allergy community. Mt. Sinai has already brought to light the possibility of introducing baked milk and egg to people with milk and egg allergies. They have also lead the way in researching the link between bullying and food allergies, and the lack of a link between waiting to introduce foods to infants and the development of food allergy.

Part of this donation may go toward some of the clinical trials currently underway at the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute, such as using Xolair to help develop milk tolerance and the effect of Chinese Herbal medicine on food allergies. All great research paving the way toward figuring out what causes food allergy and how to prevent it.

Allergy Free Eggs

It may seem a little science fictionish, but researchers at Deakin’s School of Life and Environmental Sciences in Australia believe they can modify the proteins within egg whites to produce chickens which will lay allergy-free eggs.

Maybe we can also answer that age-old question- "Which came first, the chicken or the egg? 

In this case, the egg wins.

Researchers at Deakin, in collaboration with CSIRO in Geelong and the Poultry Co-operative Research Centre, state that there are four proteins in egg white that cause allergic reactions. They have found a way to effectively switch off those allergens in the egg, which will make a chicken that will then lay eggs free of allergens.

This could lead to a flu vaccine free of egg allergen and may even lead to bakery items and other commercially available foods that can be labelled as containing "allergen-free eggs". 

While the research is expected to take another three years to complete, there is a possibility of allergy-free vaccines in five years. 

This leads me to wonder if allergens can also be switched off in peanuts, dairy and other foods that cause allergic reactions for many people.

Stay tuned!

Baked Milk and Egg Recipes for Dairy and Egg Allergic

Bake with Dry Milk

So is anyone working on allergy-friendly recipes that introduce baked milk and baked egg for those with dairy and egg allergies? 


This Twitter feed from Dr. Browdash at the 2012 Western Society of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (WSAAI) meeting says, "70% of children who are allergic to egg or milk can tolerate extensively heated forms of the protein (e.g. cookies, cake).


We've gotten the go-ahead from the allergist, but I'm getting a little bored with my chocolate cake recipe into which I add one egg now. The guidelines are: bake for a minimum of 30 minutes at a temperature of at least 350 degrees. This means no cookies or cupcakes (not in the oven long enough), my favorite granola bar recipe is out for the same reason too. Cake seems to work well as I can substitute the additional eggs called for in the recipe. I'm not doing well with the baked milk at all, although we've had some success with commercially available breads like Pepperidge Farm Cinnamon Swirl, although I would prefer to make from scratch so I can control, and then increase the amount of dairy protein as tolerance increases.


This is an untapped area. Anyone else exploring this? I'd love some suggestions!

Food Allergy Update: Almonds Are In

With a child allergic to dairy, egg, peanuts, tree nuts and shellfish, we've worried over the years about protein and calcium sources. It's tough to get those things while avoiding so much. Last week, my child tried a sliver of almond.

No reaction, even though a blood test showed an allergy to almond.

The next day, half an almond.

No reaction.

Fast forward a week and a bunch of almonds later. Either my child was never allergic to almonds, or the allergy was very recently outgrown. Whatever the case, I'm glad to be able to add this nutrient-packed food to his diet.

Sesame seed, almonds, baked milk (powdered) and baked egg all successful over the past few months.

On to cheese this week.

We're making progress. Very exciting, quite stressful.

Food Allergy Challenges for Baked Egg and Milk

I just baked a cake. It has an egg in it. A real egg for my egg allergic child! Last night I baked bread in the bread machine. I put 15 grams of dried milk powder in it. Real milk for my milk allergic child!

I haven't shared anything about this nearly 3 month journey because like all journeys, it's had plenty of bumps in the road and wrong turns. Frankly, I feel like we've stepped off the road and we're ploughing our way through uncharted territory. It's scary. It's exciting. We continue to move forward.

This food allergy journey began in July 2010 when we made an appointment to do a baked egg challenge in our allergist's office. As instructed, I baked an angel food cake with 12 eggs. My egg allergic child needed to eat one piece to get roughly one egg. There was much anxiety leading up to the appointment. It's hard to convince a child to eat something after telling them for 10 years to never eat it. The anxiety made the appointment difficult. Physical symptoms were hard to separate from symptoms of anxiety. The challenge was not completed. We left the office not knowing if there had been an allergic reaction.

Over the next few days, we, the parents, decided to use egg in baked products- just one egg in a whole cake for example. Our allergist was aware and not totally comfortable with the plan, but acknowledged that we had the tools to handle a reaction if there was one.

There wasn't a reaction.

For several months now my egg allergic child has been eating baked goods containing one egg that have been baked for approximately 30 minutes.

So, we decided to tackle baked milk. We wanted to use a small amount of dried milk powder in a batch of muffins. For the first serving, we decided to go into the allergist's office. This wasn't a traditional food challenge as technically we weren't using enough of the allergen, but the reassurance of having a doctor close by was helpful. My milk allergic child was able to eat a whole muffin that contained 0.33 grams of dried milk powder. As per the allergist's instructions, we've continued to keep milk powder in the diet over the past week.

This experience has been fraught with anxiety for all of us, but we hope we're doing the right thing in the long run. Our efforts are two-fold: get missing nutrients into the diet and begin to introduce the allergen slowly to allow the body to recognize it as okay.

There continues to be moments of, "I think my mouth is tingling" and "What if I can't breathe after I eat this?". We work through each situation as it comes up with as much confidence as we can muster. We're just parents trying to do the right thing by our child.

I certainly can't recommend this method, but I can recommend an open dialogue with your allergist. The research is coming in quickly and it's hard to keep up with the latest recommendations. Talk to your doctor and make a plan that is best for your child and your family.

I'll keep you posted on ours and hope you'll keep us posted on yours. We can all learn from one another.