Food Allergy Questions

My 12-year-old has a severe allergy to sesame seeds. The best defense is to teach your child to be watchful himself. After a few reactions, my daughter is very careful to inspect food and read ingredient panels - or make me read them if I forget. Your step son's allergies are going to be much more difficult. But a little homework in advance - lots of reading of ingredient panels will help you know for sure what products you can buy and what you can't. Most foods now have an allergen alert at the bottom of the ingredient panel, making it easy to find the most common allergens easily.

A warning about sesame seeds - they are not always visible! When you order burgers from a restaurant ask for a bun without sesame seeds. They may offer you the bottom of two buns instead because only the tops have sesame seeds. You or your son then have to closely inspect the bottoms because there will be stray seeds cammouflaged in the bun. I always do this inspection for her so she doesn't end up touching them. Also, if you find a brand of bread you like and one bread in their line has sesame seeds, there's a good chance that a random seed could end up on a non-sesame product. Make sure others who are eating with you keep their sesame seeds away from your son's space.

Crackers - you'd think the sesame seeds would be obvious, but some brands have the sesame seeds crunched up and sprinkled on top. Never trust any cracker or bread product no matter how tame it looks - ALWAYS read the ingredients!!

Hummis - we just ended up in the ER a few weeks ago over this. We never eat hummis, so had no idea that it's made with tahini, which is basically sesame paste (like peanut butter.) My daughter took one taste of it and her lips swelled and throat closed. So any food that has tahini in it is concentrated sesame seeds. That's a really bad thing.

Other than learning the good foods from the evil ones, always keep Benedryl at home, in your purse, in the glove compartment of the car, at school...wherever he hangs out. That stuff works very quickly.

Good luck!!

Congrats on your upcoming wedding! I have a 9 year old daughter and went through some allergy issues with her. Hers were not food related but none the less, I have an idea for you. There is a great Health Food Store (can't think of the exact name) at Mexico Road and Cave Springs in the strip mall across from the bowling alley. I have been in there many times and the owners and employees are very knowledgable when it comes to this type of stuff! Might be a good place to start.
Good Luck,
G.

A friend of mine here in St. Louis started a line of food products (the preprapared kind) that are free of the most common allergens and are better tasting than the other products on the market. They are very convenient too. You can find her products in stores around the country, but not yet here in St. Louis. To get them here, you can go to her web site at www.allergaroo.com and order them directly.

Since he has a wheat allergy, you may want to try some gluten free products, they are very simple in what they do contain. Dierbergs has actually started to carry a few of these products. Corn is another story, corn is in just about everything, in the form of corn syrup, you need to be careful with anything sweet. You may want to travel over to St. Louis to either Whole Foods, Trader Joes or the other one on Ladue Rd. (I can't remember the name right now). These are stores that carry more natural products, not so processed. Sounds like protein, rice and fruit are going to become your friends if they aren't already. I think that you are going to have to cook for this child, from scratch. You should try to avoid most convenience items when he is with you. There are millions of recipe sites here on the internet. Type in wheat free recipes or corn free recipes and see where it leads you. Good Luck!!

There is a lot of information on the web about celiac disease which is about gluton free foods. There's a secion in Dierbergs in the organic aisle with gluton (sp) free items. Look up ideas on the internet. Good luck