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Adults Living With Food Allergies

LIVING WITH FOOD ALLERGIES

Eight different foods including peanuts, which can cause particularly severe reactions, are responsible for 90 percent of all food allergies. For the 11 million Americans living with food allergies, dining out, whether at a restaurant or a friend's home, can cause more problems than it's worth. Unless you're standing over the chef in the kitchen, the fact is you have no guarantee that the food or foods to which you're allergic won't end up on your plate.
Ref. https://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/08/07/food...hel/index.html

Allergies Food Living Adults

I only have one food allergy that I know of. I am allergic to pumpkin seeds. Not pumpkins or pumpkin pie, just pumpkin seeds. I swell up all over when I eat just one, its really weird. I was ten when I first had them, and we weren't sure what it was since we were eating lots of snack foods. Two years later, I was just eating handfuls of them at a ball game. It took just ten minutes to go from a severe head ache, to swelling and trouble breathing. I had to be taken to the hospital via ambulance from the baseball game. It was not pretty. The doctor was hoping I would grow out of it, I was too since I love salted roasted pumpkin seeds. But I ate one last year and got a huge headache and minor swelling. So I still can't eat them.

Adults Living With Food Allergies Health & Special Psychology

We live with this every day, as both my Husband and Daughter have allergies to Gluten.
incidentally, the news report is incorrect stating that gluten is also known to most people as wheat. It is in fact something that is mostly found in wheat, but is also found in around 30 other food sources.In other words, you could have a wheat allergy, and you would only be affected if you ate foods that contain wheat, whereas, you could have an allergy to gluten, and you have to avoid all foods that contain wheat, and also the other 30 foods!

I must admit, to eat out with these food allergies has been an absolute nightmare over the last few years, but as awareness has grown, the choices have definitely got better!

at the moment, we have a choice of 2 fish and chip restaurants to choose from within a 60 mile radius, so that's double the choice we had last year when we only had 1.

We have found that Chinese takeaways are the most helpful, they don't use wheat flour in their cooking anyway, but instead use rice flour, which doesn't contain gluten, and they will normally if asked, not use Soy sauce, as this is one of the 30 food products that does contain gluten.

We have only ever been lied to once, when we bought jacket potatoes, with melted cheese, and my Husband specifically asked them if the cheese was freshly grated, as pre-packed cheese sometimes contains wheat flour to prevent the cheese sticking together. We were assured it was all prepared freshly, and obviously it wasn't, as our Daughter was violently sick and had the worst ever diarrhoea within 20 minutes of eating it!

On a better note, she has just enjoyed her first ever shop bought ice cream in a cornet, sometimes we can find gluten free ice cream, but it normally has to be eaten out of a bowl or tub, so things are really on the up!