The Culinary Struggles of People with Food Allergies

The Culinary Struggles of People with Food Allergies

If you’ve sort of fallen into being tasked with making sure dinner is ready everyday as many mothers in the family are, it’s already enough of a struggle on its own maintaining some sort of variety to the food you prepare. Now try maintaining some variety when you have one or more family members who suffer from food allergies. It gets even worse if there is more than one family member suffering from food allergies, particularly if those food allergies are conflicting.

Some of the most common food allergies include the likes of eggs, dairy products like milk, peanuts, nuts like almonds, and even something like sesame seeds, but when things get really complicated is when allergies take the form of the likes of gluten intolerance. In this case thing become a lot more challenging because what doesn’t contain gluten these days? If a specific food item doesn’t contain gluten itself then it’s often listed as one which may contain traces of gluten or even peanuts since it’s a food item that’s processed in a factory that processes other food items that may contain gluten, peanuts or other allergens.

What about bread as well? Gluten intolerant people can’t eat bread, particularly those who have celiac disease, otherwise most people who have a slight gluten intolerance can get away with occasionally eating some bread in one of the various forms it comes.

The worst of the worst scenarios is when you have someone who has somehow developed an egg allergy because usually when an egg allergy is developed instead of being one they’re born with it is accompanied by a certain level of gluten intolerance. The likes of two-minute noodles are perhaps never a healthy option in the long run in any case, but for gluten intolerant people these can make you really sick, along with more ‘conventional’ types of pasta like macaroni or spaghetti.

So going back to the question of what exactly you’re meant to eat if you suffer from the common food allergies like gluten, you should actually count yourself quite lucky because your body is sort of forcing you to make the best health choices you can in terms of your diet. I asked just what food item in the store doesn’t contain gluten or allergens, either as part of its primary ingredients or as possible traces due to being processed alongside foods containing those allergens.

Why I say you’re lucky is because you’re in a sense being forced to look beyond processed foods for it is indeed these processed foods which are likely to contain allergens such as gluten. Rather go for whole foods which you can prepare using whole, fresh ingredients and you’ll notice quite the change in aspects of your life such as your energy levels and fat build up.

So the culinary struggles of people with food allergies may seem daunting at first, but once you really peel back the layers you’ll realise that there are quite a lot of options available still, albeit options which are of a healthier variety.

Kelly Tate
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