Allergy members - how do you shop for food?

Posted by: looklively

4th Jun 2014 12:52pm

Can you talk me through how you go about food shopping for yourself or a member of your family that has a food allergy. Do you go to the local supermarket or specialist store? If a supermarket, do you buy from the health food aisle or regular aisles? Do you have to check every ingredient label or do products advertise themselves well enough? Do you have to buy specific foods? Is your food bill more expensive as a result?

Moi

14th Jun 2014 04:46am

I have a son who strangely can eat peanuts without any problems, however is HIGHLY ALLERGIC to ALL OTHER NUTS!!
It really made life quite difficult as there are 'traces of or may be traces of nuts' in so many food items! Even items which wouldn't normally occur to one!
I have had to be very careful and am in the habit of reading ALL LABELS!!
Once I even found some Pumpkin soup which had 'may contain traces of nuts!!' who would have thought!!
As far as shopping especially for nut free items, I have found it is really quite simply up to me!! Health Food Shops were of no help at all!!
The bottom line is unfortunately one MUST READ ALL LABELS unless of course, the product has been bought before! It still amazes me how many food products have traces of nuts due to the machinery used in production!
As far as my son is concerned, a trace is all which is needed to send him into severe shock, needing to call an ambulance urgently!
You can only imagine how much of a nightmare it was when he was going to friends Virthday Parties or sleep-overs! Now that he is much older, he takes care and will know immediately if he has actually ingested any nut as he feels extremely Ill with a teeny almost invisible bit, so in this case he has to go to the bathroom and once he has been able to vomit, is relatively alright!
Going out is also a NIGHTMARE as one can ask the staff or even the Chef, to be told NO AND IN FACT THIS NOT CORRECT!!
I am sorry there is no simple answer to this extremely difficult problem when shopping!
Obviously if my son had some other kind of food allergy it may have made shopping much easier, although I don't know this for sure!! - NANETTE

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