Living with food allergies – how to be safe.

When you get a diagnosis of food allergies, the best thing you can do is to understand that your life and your needs are going to change drastically. Food allergies can only be managed, which means that you need to fairly quickly gain lots of information and start making different choices about many things in your life. This is not about how and what you need. Unfortunately, food allergies affect many other aspects of your life. People with food allergies very often experience:

• frustration, anger, and anxieties about living with food allergies

  

  travel with food allergies

• basic tasks, such as grocery shopping, label reading, meal preparation become a challenge

• dining out and eating out with friends or colleagues needs to be planned ahead

• isolation

• lack of confidence to handle food allergies

• uncertainty about how to approach different situations/people

• travel/vacation planning brings more anxiety than joy

The sooner you start understanding food allergies and your new needs the better your health and confidence level will be. As the first step, I would advise you to make sure that you feel safe at the place where the most of your foods are being prepared. This is one step that should not be underestimated. Being gluten-free with a number of other food allergies taught me to be very careful about my food. At the very moment when I found out about my new needs, I have opened every cupboard in our kitchen and cleaned out everything that could have caused me an allergic reaction. This included reading labels on things I have never read before and thrown out anything even little bit suspicious. I also educated myself on chemicals added to foods and other names for common allergens. All this research, googling and cleaning out lead to our whole house becoming gluten free and food allergies free. If you can’t or don’t want to go to this extent, have designated cupboards for your “safe” foods and different cupboards for food for other family members.  I would suggest that you label everything clearly to prevent any mistakes or accidents.

I would say that getting into the action and physically making my place “safe” for myself made me feel much better about the whole situation. My husband was the greatest support I could ask for and he actually lived for a long time on the same diet as me. This really made my life and adjustment so much easier and I felt ultimately supported. We have explored our new options together, looked for foods that I could have, instead of looking for limitations. We went through recipes, made trips to health food stores and educated ourselves on new or ancient grains and flours. It has been a steep learning curve with very little help from outside, while I kept craving my old favorite foods. However, we have seen changes in my health fairly quickly and continued to be very strict on what would actually enter our house. With time, of course, we have made an agreement that it was OK for my husband to buy things that he enjoyed; he would just keep them separately from my food.

IF YOU ALLOW FOOD ALLERGENS IN YOUR HOME YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND CROSS-CONTAMINATION between foods. We agreed to take this step with an awareness of risks and agreement to be very careful with foods I am allergic to.  At that point, I felt confident enough to manage my own needs safely. I didn’t want to deprive him of pleasures of foods that he likes; I just wanted to make sure that I am safe to eat and cook in my own house. So, even today, after nearly ten years, “regular” foods very sparingly make it to our house. Exceptions are when we have visitors, or I decide to cook one of my husband’s favorite foods. Be aware that my allergies are not as severe that I wouldn’t be able to handle or smell food that I am allergic to. I just can’t eat them. If your allergies are more severe – TAKE EXTRA PRECAUTION and BE SAFE first.

Even with some liberty about the food that we bring home, we make sure that everything is labeled and clearly marked, so we can distinguish between foods that I can or can’t eat. I have developed many receipts during those years to nourish and treat myself to cakes, pasta, and homemade bread. Even our friends enjoy many of gluten-free, lactose-free foods without complaining about their taste 

If you have questions, needs, or would like to hire a health coach to develop confidence in living and traveling with food allergies, let me know. You can even ask about cooking tips or help with your own cooking skills while using safe foods without food allergens. We can also work on developing great tasting food, recipes, and menus to fit your dietary needs.

Some of my favorite recipes will be coming soon.

dining with food allergies