Food for Thought
Allergies are on the rise. So is misinformation.
We just roll our eyes, dismiss her concerns and, maybe, slip Timmy a lollipop on the sly, because it’s obvious the food issues belong to his mom. Or we simply stop inviting hyper food mom’s kid to the group. Or hyper food mom stops coming because she feels invalidated. Or because she’s afraid our kids will breathe on her kid with their poisonous goldfish-cracker breath.
Hyper food mom, with her litanies about allergies and sensitivities and intolerances, seems harmless enough. But what happens when a child’s food issues aren’t a matter of discomfort or paranoia? Hyper food mom pollutes the discussion of true food allergies and makes other adults less likely to lend credence to the needs of kids with genuine food allergies, a very real new epidemic.
Roughly 2.2 million kids in the U.S. have a life-threatening food allergy, according to the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network. Eight common foods – peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, dairy, fish, shellfish, dairy and soy – trigger 90% of these reactions. A mere molecule of the offending protein is enough to send an allergic kid into anaphylactic shock, which can result in death.
When my first kid was diagnosed with the digestive disorder Celiac Disease, I became hyper food mom. I snapped at a friend who started to stir my kid’s pot of gluten-free pasta with the same spoon she used to stir the regular stuff. For the first few weeks after my daughter’s diagnosis, I have no doubt that there was some serious eye-rolling. Eventually, I got some perspective. Celiac Disease, while it requires a certain amount of dietary vigilance, isn’t life-threatening.
True food allergies, on the other hand, are. And yet, they’re often confused with food intolerances. Take dairy. A lactose intolerance is when the digestive system is unable to break down large amounts of milk sugar, or lactose; it’s caused by a shortage of the enzyme lactase. Gastric complaints like extreme gas, bloating and diarrhea are common. A dairy allergy, on the other hand, is based in the immune system, which treats the foreign proteins like attacking Huns and starts shutting down the body’s systems (like the respiratory or circulatory) in order to contain the uprising. Once this cascading reaction occurs, it can be extremely difficult to stop. Injectable epinephrine – either in an EpiPen(TM) or a Twinject (TM) – can stabilize someone long enough to get him to a hospital.
In short, intolerances can be remarkably unpleasant. Allergies can be deadly.
Comments
12 Responses to “The truth about child food allergies, on Babble.com.”
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I’m disappointed. You talk about dispelling myths about food allergies, and yet you can’t evenproperly explain lactose intolerance. People with the intolerance are difficent in the enzyme lactase, a protein which digests lactose, which is a sugar. They do not produce enough of it on their own. A buildup of lactose in the body causes all the symptoms of the intolerance.
Re: philospherdad’s comment:I’m not sure what you are disagreeing with here. The article states: “A lactose intolerance is when the digestive system is unable to break
down large amounts of milk sugar, or lactose; it’s caused by a shortage
of the enzyme lactase.”You say: “People with the intolerance are difficent (*deficient) in the enzyme lactase, a
protein which digests lactose, which is a sugar. They do not produce
enough of it on their own. A buildup of lactose in the body causes
all the symptoms of the intolerance.”Am I just not seeing the glaring error here that gives the article your stamp of disapproval (apologies if so)? But I think you’re pretty much saying the same thing…
Thanks for this balanced article. My son is anaphylactic to milk. He’s only 18 months, so we haven’t really had to deal with the most difficult issues of food allergies because we haven’t had to have him out of our sight really. We’re fortunate enough to have one of us be a stay-at-home parent.
But we’re worried about school and daycare when that time comes. It is hard to explain to people that this isn’t just lactose intolerance.
I am also aware of the need to have a balanced approach when it comes to making demands of others. It’s great that some schools are now “nut-free”, but I don’t really see a realistic way to ask a school to go “milk free”. I just don’t think it’s in the cards.
But what about when another little kid offers my son string-cheese? If I can’t force a school to do milk/dairy-free (which I don’t want to), this is a very real risk. If my son and his classmates are too young to know better, this is a very real possibility.
Can I count on a teacher in a class of 30 children to watch out for my son every minute along with all the other allergic kids?
This is the struggle that parents of children with life-threatening allergies face.
While I agree with you about the overriding importance of acknowledging and accommodating life-threatening food allergies, I urge you to do some more homework and find out about allergies–not intolerances–that are still pretty serious without being life-threatening, and perhaps excuse some of us for being hyper-sensitive about what our child eats. My son is almost 16 months long, and it has taken this long for doctors finally to determine that the blood in his stools and his failure to thrive is, indeed, due to food allergies which are not life-threatening but are wreaking havoc in his gut. After all other tests turned up negative, he had to have an endoscopy with biopsies in order for doctors to diagnose–beyond any doubt–that his intestine is undergoing allergic reactions to food. When I tell other people that he is allergic and they find out that his life is not at immediate risk, I get dismissed as the hyper-sensitive mom that you describe. Yet my son wakes up shrieking in pain if he eats even the tiniest amounts of dairy, stops eating, and now officially is off the charts. Yes, it would be great for me to relax about food, but it probably won’t happen until he feels better. Until then, the condescending tone of your article doesn’t help.
K1 said: “My son is anaphylactic to milk.”
I love this usage of anaphylactic. At first I thought it sounded incorrect, but the more I thought about it, it meets a need. “Allergic” is misused so often for what are really only sensitivities or intolerances, that it makes it sound like no big deal to have an allergy.
As someone who suffered for a number of years with a severe legume allergy (ironically I could eat peanuts all I wanted but split peas and pinto beans could kill me) it was more than frustrating when, upon hearing I was allergic to beans, people would react as if I was just being a picky eater. It was exhausting to have to qualify it with, “No, I mean REALLY allergic…like anaphylactic shock allergic…like asthma so bad you could die allergic”.
Stretching “anaphylactic” to include the potential for the reaction, not just the reaction itself, is a great way to get it across to people without all that tiresome verbiage.
My 6 month-old daughter hasn’t started solid foods yet, but we’re getting ready to start introducing them. I’m just praying she won’t have any allergies. Fingers crossed.
In this article you say that Celiac Disease is certainly not life threatening as is real food allergies. CD is an autoimmune disease that initially attacks the gut and does not allow proper absorbtion of nutrients tp sustain a healthy body. Organs are deprived essential vitamins and nutrients. The body slowly destroys itself. It may not be as emminent as an anaphalactic reaction, however to say it is not life threating it a great misjustice to all those who deal with this devastating disease. I am very disappointed with your description of moms who deal with this on a daily basis and see their kids health fluctuate depending on what their children eat. Please do not minimize their struggles.
Celiac Disease is an autoimmune disease that can literally destroy the body from the inside out!
I have Celiac Disease. I have two boys that are allergic to milk, one son that is allergic to peanuts, soy and about 5 fruits, and a husband who is allergic to milk. So, I do understand allergies and how to cook, clean, and just live with food allergies. This was a good article that brought one really important issue to my mind. It is up to me to inform my school on food allergies. I cannot sit back and expect someone else to understand my situation. My children attend a private school which I believe is not as educated as the public schools. I worked in the cafeteria last year. I was the mean monitor! ha Last year I had a 4th, 3rd and k4 student. We did not have a separate area for food allergy children nor was I ever told of one student who had food allergies. Mine were the only ones (yeah right) out of 250 children! As parents, we are to educate, not nag or complain, our schools.
On another note about this article, as Stardust mentioned, I feel it was taken very lightly that if the child does not go into shock, if the allergen is consumed that no harm is done. I beg to differ. Soy makes my son very aggressiveand angry, wheat can make me very ill to the point of throwing up and spending a lot of time on the toilet, as well as, milk can do the same plus so much more. That interferes with school don’t you think! Never downplay what allergies can do to the body. It may not kill us but boy it can wreak some havoc!
While I appreciate your intent with this article, I think it actually did a disservice to those with serious conditions like Celiac Disease. While not an acute life-threatening situation, ingestion of gluten causes serious long-term complications to someone with Celiac Disease.
Celiac Disease is not an allergy, nor is it simple food intolerance. Celiac Disease is a serious autoimmune
At this time, the only treatment for Celiac Disease is a strict gluten free diet. Exposure, intentional or not, to gluten triggers Celiac Disease to become active, attacking the body–not the gluten–and doing serious internal damage to the body’s systems.
If you would like to educate yourself about the disease, please visit our website at
I would hope you would publish a correction for the misinformation your article disseminated.
Another article confusing food allergies with food intolerances, and not quoting any hard stats on true life-threatening food allergies because . . . well, er, there aren’t many really. Life-threatening food allergies are actually very rare, and hyper-inflating the danger by trotting out the same anecdotal cases where some poor child WAS fatally allergic causes more damage to kids and parents though unnecessary stress and anxiety than they would ever suffer from typical allergic reactions to food. THAT has been documented with case studies. BTW, the founder of the FAA is not exactly without conflict of interest in her crusade on allergies . . . do your own research on this.
I appreciate this article for its human approach. This isn’t an article written for us parents with allergic kids, it’s written for those who don’t have allergic kids and need to understand us better. Unfortunately, it seems that this article draws mostly us folks who live with food allergies everyday.
I have two kids: one with allergy to milk and eggs, the other allergic to all nuts. Both anaphylactic. For anyone wanting to know more on the latest research in an easy to read form I would recommend The Allergy Bible by Linda Gamlin. This is a facinating read actually on the links between different allergens, symptoms and and possible evolutionary causes along with practical advice, recipes and more. I also recommend What’s To Eat? The Milk-Free, Egg-Free, Nut-Free Food Allergy Cookbook by Linda Marienhoff Coss. The baking section is awesome!
This article resonates with me. So many people confuse us “allergy moms” as crazy hyper active people who need to take a serious chill pill. I wish more restaurants were more like Ming’s because I would go to them! What a tremendous article!
What a great article! I’ve tried very hard to maintain composure and calm while being vigilant in protecting my son against his many severe food allergies. To that end, I’ve started a blog to help simplify life for families living with food allergies.
shmallergy.wordpress.com
I’d love to hear from other parents/individuals living with food allergies and start a robust and useful discussion on the subject.
The less stressed we are as parents, the healthier our children will be in the long run.