What it’s like to live with a nut and dairy allergy

I have a daughter with dairy, nut and egg allergy, and my experience as a mother has been that with the best will in the world you cannot trust anyone else with the preparation or serving of the food she eats. Everything she comes into contact with is checked, and mistakes are still made.
We never ate out as a family when she was young, we tried a few times, at infant school, I checked with the school every item that would go on the plate for Christmas dinner, I even provided the turkey as I was unsure what the basting was on the school turkey, I checked what the potatoes were roasted in and that the veg was plain boiled, when hers was being dished up a dinner lady without thinking put a dollop of mash potato onto her plate by mistake, she became unwell, she said that she thought she would be allowed it as everyone was making a special effort to include her. Holidays were spent in this country, self-catering, with my usual repertoire of tried and tested meals. I used to carry snack foods around with me, a ham sandwich, crisps, in case were hungry while out as we were never able to pop into a bakery, or a takeaway. Although there was always Mcdonalds chips an a coke! Weddings – I used to meet with the chef, find out what they were cooking and create my own similar dish and nip into the kitchen put it on one of their plates and microwave it and then take it out to her, I never liked handing it to a waiter in case he would have any reason to touch the dish with contaminated hands! We did the same for her prom. We went abroad a couple of times when she was a teenager, but only ever self catering. As an older teenager when she was invited to weddings or dinner dances she would choose to eat a portion of chips before arriving and sit at the table without eating and just join in the conversation, the meal was only one part of the evening, the dancing was always the best bit, and her friends knew and understood that. The thought of taking a mouthful that had been contaminated, the tell-tale tingle that she had started on a journey of no return, taking the epi-pen, calling the ambulance, spending the next 6 hours in hospital with the horrible feeling that her body has been taken over by some horrible being, was jus a risk that she wasn’t prepared to take.
She is now 21, has moved into a flat with her boyfriend, a completely allergen free flat, they eat out only when it is a friends party and there are more places now that do food she can eat, she researches them well, if she is unsure she will refuse to eat and just sit and socialise, her boyfriend will also not eat so he doesn’t pose any risk. She has a fridge full of fresh meat, veg and fruit, when I used to bring home a new dairy free yoghurt or pudding, quite often she would refuse to even try it, she is now in complete control of what she eats and has a much larger repertoire of dishes than I ever had. I think the thing we must remember is that the allergic person may not be so interested in new foods, new tastes etc as they may be a bit wary, and see eating more as a means of necessity, they may gain pleasure from general socialising, where as those of us that can eat anything enjoy eating out. My daughter never understood why she had to have dairy alternatives such as soya cream and cheese, her argument was that she never had it in the first place so why did she need to replace it, we may enjoy those tastes but why would she. I am very proud of her, she has been allergic since she was born, and is likely to remain so, but she is healthy and in control,

Me again, the “embodiment of satan”, as far as most of you are concerned…

In 1975 I collapsed and nearly died of asphyxiation while walking to school 20 minutes after being given a “hayfever jab”…my lungs had filled with liquid in response to the jab.

In 1984 I was hospitalised in North Africa due to a critical asthma attack…

In 1995 we rushed our 4 year-old daughter to hospital, her body over 50% red and bloated with urticaria (potentally fatal if it reaches the throat) after playing on grass sprayed with chemicals.

So I am not an idiot and I do know what I am talking about.

So why am I so opposed to the prevailing “wisdom” about food “allergies” (intolerance, call it what you will)?

By the age of 30 I was on the maximum dosage of asthma inhalers – becotide twice daily and 4 – 5 doses of ventolin. My asthma was getting worse and the next step was powerful oral medication.
I simply could not accept that doctors regarded this cocktail of toxins as “treatment”, and could not offer me anything else.

I spent five years trying various things with varying results (acupuncture, herbs, soya diet etc.). In desperation I signed up for a breathing course (Buteyko, ask your GP, works for other allergies too.).

The result was striking because I came off the ventolin within 3 days. The becotide I stopped after a month. What this proved to me that although not exactly “in my head”, asthma was deeply rooted in my psycho-emotional system and was not an irreversible medical condition. Since then I have always tried to look beyond the symptoms of health problems and to identify the real causes.

There are two things that emerge from several of the comments above:

ANXIETY – parents projecting anxiety onto their children and vice versa about their “food allergies”.

Think about this: as I said before, it is simply absurd, and unacceptable, that the current generation of human beings should be unable to eat two of the foods that have nourished us for thousands of years – nuts and milk. Did hunter-gatherers keel over with nut and berry allergies? I doubt it.

That is why parents of these children, rather than encouraging mutual hand wringing, must refuse to accept the glib medical diagnosis of “food allergies” and look for the real cause of these problems (the severity of which is not in question).

I don’t have the answer, but I do know this:

All the coeliac sufferers I know are, to put it politely, rather highly strung women (in one case mother and daughter) from rather chaotic and tense dysfunctional families where “the next meal” was an uncertain prospect, if at all, and probably came out of a packet. Anxiety again.

Which leads me to my second point (and back to the original topic of this article):

FOOD LABELLING

If your children suffer from “food allergies”, then why in heaven’s name are you BUYING FOOD IN PACKETS AND JARS???

I consider myself the luckiest man alive, because (having been raised on the UK post-war diet of Smash, Nesquik, and Angel Delight) my wife grew up in North Africa; her family (and everybody else) simply bought fresh meat, fish and vegetables and bread from the markets and made their own food. We still do. It takes some organisation but there is no reason why you cannot do this in the UK, the supermarkets are excellent.

In my personal experience, in countries where people eat real food that hasn’t seen the inside of a factory, and children are raised to eat the same food as their parents in a regular, structured, environment, food intolerance/allergies are simply unheard of.

I suspect that the answer lies somewhere therein…

@wavechange – I didn’t get rid of asthma by “changing the way I breathe”, I paid out of my own pocket to go on a week-long course to completely re-educate my breathing. This treatment is now promoted by many GPs. My wife still forces me to do the exercises in the evening because it stops me snoring too!

As for cutting down the amount of processed food in our diets. I am saying you need to ELIMINATE processed food, not cut it down. Why isn’t it going to happen?

Seriously, are you saying parents are happy to hammer on about their kids having to go around in fear of death, armed to the teeth with epi pens, inhalers and antihistamines, but are not prepared to radically change their family diets and eating habits??

If that is the case, then there is little hope for them, and I feel sorry for the children that are the innocent victims of this.

I have to tell you this – not allergy-related, but it’s at the root of the allergy/intolerance problems:

When my daughter was about 10 we lived in Edinburgh and she brought a pal home for supper. We were aware that in this girl’s house the parents/nanny had to cook 4 different meals each time because each child would only eat one thing – one ate only sausages, one ate fish fingers and so on.

Anyway, we serve up fish (cod or haddock, nothing exotic) baked with mash and vegetables.

The little girl looks at her plate and bursts into tears. “I… can’t… eat.. this!”

THAT is how bad things are in the UK and THAT is why people have food-related problems. The parents tolerate and even encourage this ludicrous behaviour from their offspring. It’s time to get a grip, folks!!!

Good debate and some interesting reading, but to get back to the point, I assume you are self catering and you have checked their are adequate cooking facilities, many hotels that offer self catering as well only provide a kettle and one hob! Check with the airline what you can carry in the cabin and what you can take in the hold and take as may of the staple luxurys you can like dairy free spread, milk, we used to take dried super noodles etc, take your translation cards and research all associated words on the internet, along with pre translated phrases that you may need if a reaction occurs. When abroad and also in this country try not to make such a big deal of eating out, and if unsure – don’t, as a parent as my daughter got older I found the quest to intergrate her into what we wanted to do a fruitless exercise that caused anxiety all round, try to focus your holiday on activities that don’t involve food, family holidays always caused me a lot of stress, being away from my own kitchen and familiar shops and the heightened level of alert we were on, trying not to deprive our other children of tasting the local gauge made holidays my own personal nightmare. We have come out the other side now, my other children enjoy holidays with their friends, my daughter enjoys her holidays as she feels no need to eat out and can cook to suit herself, and my husband and I can go on cruise and have all the food provided and cooked for us, I still feel guilty when I eat foods that I wouldn’t have eaten before, I always ate the same as she did, while my husband would try new foods with our other children. So to conclude, do as much research as you can, but if unsure don’t eat out and try to focus your holiday on being together and other activities, rather than on dining out, dining out and putting your trust in someone else is not a pleasurable experience for a highly allergic child.

Hi, I was diagnosed with ‘Lactose Intolerance’ in 1982, The first case in N.Ireland. I never heard of it untill my Consultant confirmed it. I was always unwell after eating, anaemic, tired, and I had lost alot of weight. I also can’t tollerate soya, nuts and the onion family. There is a huge differance between an ‘intollerance’ and an allergy. In my case I am missing the enzyme ‘Lactase’ which breaks down the milk sugar ‘Lactose’, which simply means I can’t digest lactose. This is found in milk, cream, whey, soft cheeses and yoghurts. Hard cheeses e.g. chedder and parmasen, and good old butter do not contain lactose, as when they are finally made the lactose has been digested and used up through the fermentation process.Whith an allergy you get an immediate and possibly a life threating reaction to the allergen e.g. nuts or a bee sting, so you must avoid these and always carry an ‘Epi Pen’.
Generally a milk allergy is caused by the milk protein ‘Caesin’ and probably the reaction is differant to an intolerance
I also have to spend ages shopping as I have to read the labels and ingredients carefully before I buy. when I go out to a restaurant either at home or in another country I choose 2 or 3 meals I like the look off and then ask the waiter/waitress to check with the chef if they contain milk/cream.I very rarely can have soup and/or a sweet. I have got so used to it now that I expect to be very limited in my choices.What disappoints me the most is that people with ‘Lactose Intolerance’ are not catered for, though people with ‘Cealiac Disease’ are. Also chefs and food manufacturers seem to put milk/cream into most things, even foods(Christmas cakes, puddings and mince pies) that never had milk/cream in their original receipe! It just makes me want to scream!