The articles in this section relate to peanut allergies and nut allergies.
These two types of allergy may get separate sections in the future because they are related only in spelling. Peanuts are more like peas, and not at all like nuts. Peanuts are legumes and related to lentils and peas, but not tree nuts.
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“Gluten Allergy” tends to get used pretty loosely. There is confusion and misuse of gluten allergy.
I admit it: the term event gets misused on this site.
This article will explain what a gluten allergy is, what its close cousin, the gluten intolerance is, and celiac disease. I’ll also touch on the term “wheat allergy”.
The fact is though, that the term “gluten allergy” is pretty convenient. When you tell someone you have a gluten allergy, you are telling them not to feed you gluten or it will make you sick.
Does it really matter if in fact you are actually intolerant to gluten or have celiac disease, but instead say you have a gluten allergy?
It does to some people, those who have a medical background or are sticklers for semantics.
When it comes to your health though, the main goal is to stay physically healthy, not semantically correct. Most people get it when you say you have a gluten allergy, no matter what the underlying cause.
I suggest you don’t confuse people by giving them exactly and precisely the correct term.
Having said that, you can certainly use the term “celiac disease” if that’s what you have. More and more people understand what that means. It is a more specific term, so I suggest you do not use it unless you are celiac.
Strictly speaking, and allergy involves an abnormal reaction of IgE antibody cells to non-pathogenic substances such as dust, pollen or gluten.
The result is an inflammatory response, which you will experience as eczema, hives, hay fever asthma.
More broadly, allergic reactions to food include:
(The above courtesy of wikipedia.com)
Where as the classic allergy symptoms occur within minutes of ingesting gluten, delayed reactions can effect you up to several days after ingesting gluten. Those who adhere to the strict definition of an allergy may not agree that this is an allergy, but it certainly is an abnormal reaction to a normal food, and that gives you every right to avoid it.
This is a very challenging type of allergy to diagnose, since tests can be quite inaccurate for this type of allergy, and you are unlikely to discover cause and effect easily, especially for foods you eat every day.
Note: This article is in progress and will be added to soon.
Share your experience! What works for you? What are your challenges? Please add your comments below …
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For those of you who are celiac or aallergic to barley, avoiding barley may not seem so bad. After all, it is much less common that wheat.
There are a few things to watch out for, and some of them are literally trick questions. Some ingredients look safe, but are in fact made from barley.
Here is a list of foods and food ingredients that contain (or may contain) barley or are derived from barley.
NOTE: This is not a complete list, but it will be updated as we discover additional information.
Watch for the following on lists of ingredients. Many of these ingredients could be made from a variety of sources, including barley. Other than food that is specifically labeled “gluten-free”, you can’t be sure exactly what these ingredients are made from, and it may change over time and manufacturers use different suppliers.
If your favorite food contains one of these ingredients, try calling the manufacturer and asking them what the ingredient is derived from.
As general awareness in the food industry increases about gluten allergies and celiac disease, some manufacturers may shift from barley-derived ingredients to corn-derived ingredients.
These foods are made from barley or can contain barley. Read ingredients to be sure.
Some ingredients look like they might be made from barley but are not:
Note: one reader reports that “pillsbury all purpose organic to be barley free”
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By Karen Blue
I have long been impressed with the allergy guide at Swiss Chalet so I decided to find out how other restaurants owned by the same company compared. Swiss Chalet is owned by Cara Operations Limited, a Canadian company also owns Restaurant chains Harvey’s, Kelsey’s Milestones and Montana’s Cookhouse. Cara decided to discontinue using peanut free ice creams, and have gained mixed reviews from people with allergies.
Swiss Chalet offers several dairy and gluten-free items, and information on other allergens. Their Chickens are even prepared on a gluten and milk free table. Swiss Chalet has locations in most areas of Canada.
Coza Tuscan Grill in Langley BC, also owned by Cara Operations limited, does not have an allergy guide online. Harvey’s has a good allergy guide on their website, but fast food is rarely on my menu.
Kelsey’s I was less than impressed with, but I have hopes for! They did not have an allergy guide on their website. The location I went to have an outdated ingredient list that was a year old and was incomplete. For instance in some food choices they did not say what the enriched flour was enriched with (milk? folic acid?) or if the caramel was milk or sugar based leaving the dairy question open. I however talked to a very interested and aware manager at Kelsey’s. He said that with some of the menu items they where replacing wheat flour with rice flour. He also said the company is trying to improve its allergy menu.
Montana’s Cookhouse interestingly had parts of an allergy guide on its website and parts missing. Sometimes it is incomplete, on their website, but if you print the guide it does print complete. The chain I went to did not have an allergy guide at the location.
When I went to Milestones neither the kitchen staff or waitress new what an allergy guide was, or what an ingredient list was. The staff I spoke with had little interest in learning.
Note locations can differ in their allergy awareness and know how. Companies that are allergy aware can drop allergy guides. Restaurants once hopeless can become very allergy aware. It is always up to you to determine what is safe.
There are restaurants that focus strictly on a peanut free or wheat free or other allergy market. These restaurants however, are mostly in large cities. No matter where you eat it is up to you to decide what is safe.
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This section covers the important topic of how to eat out at restaurants or as a guest at friends houses when you have food allergies.
This is a challenging topic. It is much easier to eat at home, and that is hard enough at first!
When you eat at a friend’s house, you have to cope with your friend’s understating of both food and your allergy, as well as the social situation. It seems like an imposition to dictate what you can and can not eat. Still, it has to be done. At least your friends truly care about your health (if they don’t, then they are not really your friends).
Eating at restaurants is more challenging still. It is surprising how many people who work at restaurants, including cooks and owners, who really don’t know much about food and where it comes from.
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I’ve been suffering from the flu for the past few days. I am reminded that many allergy symptoms are similar to flu symptoms.
One particular symptom I’ve been having with this bout of flu is gummy eyes. At times, my eye-lashes have been all but glued together, especially when I am asleep.
Now I remember: before I got my allergies under control, I had this all the time, although less severe. Part of waking up was “sleep in my eyes”, little hard bits of goop stuck to my eye-lashes and around my eyes.
I’ve not experienced that allergy symptom in years. I’d forgotten all about it.
This leads me to believe that perhaps having sleep in your eyes is not normal. Maybe it means there is too much dust or mold in your environment.
To tell you the truth, it has been so long since I regularly had this allergy symptom, that I forget what caused it.
Not that knowing what caused it in me would help you to connect the symptom to the allergy. Symptoms vary between people for the same allergy.
Just keep in mind that if you do have sleep in your eyes when you get out of bed in the morning, and along with that if you feel groggy and really not quite human when you first get up, suspect a air-borne allergy.
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Many of the symptoms caused by allergies are also similar to food poisoning. This is especially true of stomach upset, diarrhea, and unpleasant side-effects along those lines (see gluten allergy symptoms for some specific examples).
With the possibility of having identical symptoms, how do you know if you really have allergies, or if you are dealing with food poisoning?
First of all, the allergy symptoms are not identical to food poisoning symptoms in most cases. There are often other effects that are not the same as food poisoning.
The main thing to watch out for are the patterns of when you experience the symptoms.
In most cases, food poisoning is a one-off thing. Someone left the meat out of the fridge for too long. The food was contaminated during processing. One of the ingredients went bad, and was added to the dish unnoticed. There are many causes for food spoilage, but they are usually not consistent. In other words, don’t expect that since you got food poisoning from the left-overs last week, that you will get sick every time you eat left-overs.
There could be exceptions. If a particular food processor has poor hygiene standards, or there is a fault in the way food is handled, there could be a raft of consistent food poisoning cases.
But even this is unlikely to be confused with food allergies. First of all, many people will get sick from the same food, but only if from that particular source.
Besides, most first-world countries have food inspection agencies that would discover and stop such problems pretty quickly. In the third world, food tends to come from a large number of small suppliers, so you would expect to experience food poisoning randomly (and more likely from bad water than bad food).
Allergies, on the other hand, tend to cause consistent symptoms in an individual, but not those around them. Even the symptoms themselves vary from person to person, even for the same food allergy.
This is true of allergies and food intolerances.
If you are sick for years on end, suspect food allergies. If you are sick occasionally, suspect food poisoning or some other cause.
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