Cucumber!

For a kid who is having such a rough time lately (yes, having a baby brother is annoying, we got that), Amelia managed to eat a new food anyway today, and it was... drum roll... wait for it... A VEGETABLE! Yes, folks, our scurvy-bait four-year-old had not one, but two slices of cucumber tonight at dinner. I am not sure why -- something to do with the fact that the beef burned her tongue and "cucumbers are never hot." I don't quite get the logic but it was hella exciting, anyway.

Was this a one-time only event? Or could this crunchy green thing actually get added to her repertoire? No idea, but yay for now!

Kraft Foods-- this time you FAIL!

A while back, I sung the praises of Kraft Foods for their excellent labeling. Not so fast!

A few days ago, Amelia asked if we could buy her graham crackers (I think they served them at school but she couldn't have them at the time because of her soy allergy), so since she can have soy now, we said yes. I went online and checked out Honey Maid Graham Crackers -- which, as you can see, from the ingredient listing (ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE [VITAMIN B1], RIBOFLAVIN [VITAMIN B2], FOLIC ACID), SUGAR, GRAHAM FLOUR (WHOLE GRAIN WHEAT FLOUR), SOYBEAN OIL, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED COTTONSEED OIL, HONEY, LEAVENING (BAKING SODA, CALCIUM PHOSPHATE), SALT, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, SOY LECITHIN-AN EMULSIFIER, CORNSTARCH) contains wheat and soy but no other top-8 allergens. Since it's the top graham cracker brand (or it seems to be, from all their marketing and shelf-hogging at the supermarket) and part of Kraft, I felt pretty confident that if the label didn't list a food, it wasn't in there.

I did one last scan of the box before I gave it to her, and noticed the Kosher Dairy symbol on the front (meaning in some way, shape, or form, there is dairy in this box). Super annoying and frustrating! I sent them an e-mail and I'll update when I hear back from them, but with a major food company like this, if there's some trace amount of dairy in their food, they should tell people.

Can you see the D on the front of the box? Grrr. It should be an "F" because Kraft, YOU FAIL!

4% of U.S. children have food allergies, analysis finds -- latimes.com

In this LA TIMES article, they report on the latest findings about food allergies, including that 4% of children in the United States have food allergies, and that there is a rise in cases, not just in diagnosis of the problem. No surprise there, at least for those of us dealing with food allergies, but always glad to see a mainstream publication giving attention to the problem. Read on, here:

4% of U.S. children have food allergies, analysis finds -- latimes.com

Check out FAAN's new web site

Congrats to FAAN (The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network) for re-launching their web site, which can be seen here: http://www.foodallergy.org.

Their old one was, admittedly, hideous -- with a layout that made it seem like a high-schooler built it back in 1996, so this is a much-needed improvement. You can subscribe to get alerts about undeclared allergens in foods, do a recipe search, and find out more about a particular allergen.

Congrats, FAAN, and thanks for your work on behalf of people with food allergies.

Food Challenge

Does the idea of bringing a young child to a hospital, telling her to eat a food she's never had before, and explaining it MIGHT make her sick sound fun to you? Wait, what if the kid is high-strung around doctors to begin with, and has had bad reactions to foods in the past? How about if she takes weeks or months to warm up to a new food? Yeah, and that she has to have six to eight ounces of it to see if she can manage it? If this sounds like an excellent way to spend a few hours, congratulations, you're a stronger person than me! Because the most challenging thing about Amelia's "food challenge" last week at Mt. Sinai was coming up with ways to make the experience as bearable as possible for her.

Let me back up for a moment. This summer, Amelia had her annual allergist appointment, where they did skin prick tests on her arm and *tried* to draw blood, but she got so upset they had to give up. So we did the bloodwork a few weeks later up near us, which went a lot better. The two tests showed that she had a good chance of being able to eat soy, so we decided to go ahead and do a "food challenge" (which is where a child, under the care of a doctor, eats a certain amount of a food and is observed for a reaction. No reaction? You have "passed" the challenge.)

Amelia was game about trying the chocolate soy drink (we'd built it up in the week before) but after one tiny sip she decided she didn't like it. Uh-oh. Much begging, cajoling, hectoring, bribing (Skittles), and gnashing of teeth ensued. We even mixed it in to her juice drink to hide the flavor. After, seriously, HOURS, she'd drunk about two ounces of the stuff, not the called-for six to eight. Sigh. Dr. Sicherer wasn't thrilled, but he was good-natured enough about it, and said that we should just continue to feed her small amounts of soy at home and watch for a reaction (such as eczema, or possibly, a flaring-up of her reflux).

So far we've tried to give her grilled cheese (with soy cheese, of course) and she took a teeny tiny scrape with her teeth. Not sure she even got any soy in that. Tonight Len's going to make a pizza. But I think I'm going to have to hide it in stuff, like pancakes or muffins, rather than get her to eat a brand-new food, which is always tricky.

Needless to say, the day sucked, but it's over and it appears she can start eating soy, at least in small amounts. She did pretty darn well for a four-year-old, actually -- considering her past bad experiences with doctors and with food.

Bring on the tofurky!

Keeping Allergies Off the Table

My man Ming Tsai (looking smooth, left) has a cool article in The Atlantic about how he keeps his food-allergic patrons safe when they dine at his restaurant, Blue Ginger. I love this guy.

Keeping Allergies Off the Table: "An award-winning chef explains why he makes his restaurant safe for people with food allergies...."

It's just nuts

It's just nuts, otherwise known as yet another article about how people are overreacting to food allergies. Sigh. I guess for everything there must be a backlash.

The author, Patricia Pearson, writing in Canada's Chatelaine, raises some good points. Those include that there is probably some overdiagnosis happening; that teaching kids safe habits like hand-washing and not sharing food is probably better than trying to make schools nut-free; and that most people are not allergic to food that is airborne.

Unfortunately, her arguments are totally lost in her one-sided article, which she starts off with (warning: ANNOYING parent alert) a kvetch about her son who is SO picky he won't eat mac & cheese made with certain noodle shapes and how horrid it is he can't bring a pb sandwich to school. Yep, way to make yourself sound like an ass, Pearson. Also, she doesn't factor in to account stuff like ages -- a 13-year-old can wash hands and not share food, but can a five-year-old avoid sticking their fingers in their mouths after touching a (possibly food-contaminated) desk?

I agree that there should be more research on food allergies as well as good, clear plans for having kids with food allergies in schools so that the kids are kept safe AND the rest of the student body can eat in peace, but this was not the article to try to find a rational middle ground.

If Pearson's biggest problem is a picky eater, she should a) count herself lucky and, excuse my language here, but b) stfu.

Want to read the whole magilla? Go right ahead, here!