Allergies and the Fine Print: Parent Alert

For parents of kids with allergies, labels get confusing.

Two cans of chicken broth, same brand, side by side on the shelf. One is 99 percent fat free, one is 100 percent fat free. In this case, you’d have to read the label to know that the one that is 99 percent fat free contains soy. The parent of a child allergic to soy would want to read both.

Lists of ingredients are perhaps the most boring reading material in the world, but for the parents of children with food allergies, it’s required reading – and lifesaving. It got less confusing with federal laws passed this year that demand food manufacturers called a spade a spade – and a peanut a peanut.

However, there is misunderstanding about recent federal laws ordering changes to food labeling, says Donna Zinke Cowman, the founder of FAST of Texas. “All that did was make people use the real, live word – they have to say milk and eggs instead of (food industry terms) … What people don’t understand is that they see some of those warnings on prepackaged foods and they think it’s required by law but it’s not. People think if it doesn’t have that warning that it’s safe, but that may not be the case. Warnings are not required, they’re voluntary,” she says. Some companies like Nabisco and Hershey do use the warnings, she says. “If it’s a brand I don’t know, I call and ask. That’s what parents are still in a position to do, because those shared equipment/cross contamination warnings are not required by law.”

Fort Worth allergist Dr. Susan Bailey says in some ways labeling is getting clearer and more specific. “For peanut allergies, the awareness of this is so much better than it was 10 years ago. Most companies realize they’re going to be liable if someone has a reaction to something that’s in their food but not on the label,” she says.

General Guidelines for labels and products:

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  Don’t keep anything in the house that could be a problem for your child.
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  Even though you’ve checked the label for a product before, check it again the next time you purchase it.
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  Contact manufacturers to check on the cleaning process of their lines. For example, some of Barilla’s pastas are processed on the same lines they produce egg noodles with.
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  If a label says nuts, and a child is allergic to peanuts, parents should take no chances, because peanuts are among the most plentiful and affordable “nuts” – even though, officially, they’re legumes and a member of the bean family.
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  The higher an ingredient is on the ingredient list, the more there is in the food. For someone whose allergy is not life-threatening, they need to know the threshold amount that will trigger an attack, which an allergist may be able to determine.
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  The ‘Ingredient Notices’ button on the website for the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network (http://www.foodallergy.org/) leads to a wealth of the latest information voluntarily provided by allergy-aware companies hoping to help families stave off anaphylactic attack.
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  When in doubt, contact the company by website or 1-800 number to obtain more information about products and the chance of cross-contamination.

Mom Marnie Freeman has become an expert at sussing out troublesome ingredients that might send her daughter into a fatal anaphylactic reaction.
“Every label gets read,” she says.

Test your allergy IQ here: http://raisingthinkers.blogspot.com/2008/02/test-your-allergy-iq.html

For more articles by J. Louise Larson on kids and allergies, see these links:
http://raisingthinkers.blogspot.com/2008/02/allergy-safe-at-school-be-prepared.html
http://raisingthinkers.blogspot.com/2008/02/allergies-kids-and-most-dangerous-nut.html

- J. Louise Larson http://raisingthinkers.blogspot.com/