Food Allergy Awareness Week Information and Tip #2

Governor Herbert declared this week as Food Allergy Awareness week. So in honor of this I will be posting information to help raise awareness of why food allergies can be such a big problem to those that have them. And tips to help you be allergy aware when you are around someone who has a food allergy.

Information # 2 
What is Cross Contamination? You may have heard this phrase before and you may not have.

Cross contamination occurs when harmful bacteria or Allergens spread to food from other food, surfaces, hands or equipment.

Cross Contamination in the allergy world is when a certain non allergy food gets contaminated with an allergy food.

Example 1- If a pan has been used to cook something with milk in it and is not washed thoroughly, then is used to cook something without milk, there could be milk in the next food cooked in that pan.

Example 2-If a spatula is used to flip eggs then is used to flip a pancake without being washed, there could be egg on the pancake now.

Example 3-If there is a line of food out at a buffet table and a serving spoon has dished up salad with nuts in it and then dishes up salad without nuts, the salad without nuts could now have nuts in it.

Example 4-If a restaurant has an Alfredo sauce next to a marina sauce and the Alfredo sauce is dished over the marinara sauce, and a drop of Alfredo falls into the marinara sauce, the marinara sauce now has milk in it.  Or if the pans are close together and the Alfredo sauce bubbles over into the marinara sauce.

Example 5- If a knife is used in peanut butter to spread on a peanut butter sandwich, then that same knife is used in the jam to put on that peanut butter sandwich. The jam now has peanut butter in it. This is why my daughter never eats jam from other peoples homes.

Example 6-Sorry, one more buffet line example. If someone is dishing up their plate in a buffet line and the spoon from the carrots touches the cheesy potatoes on their plate as they are putting the carrots next to them. Then the spoon goes back into the carrots, now the carrots have cheesy potato in them.

The biggest question I get asked is Really? Could that little minuscule amount of the allergen cause a big problem?  For some maybe not, but for others, YES!!! The story of my daughter with the drop of milk. It was a drop barely visible to the naked eye, and yes it caused a major problem.


Tip #2

-Believe and respect those with allergies when they say that it is a problem.  They are not just trying to be an inconvenience or a picky eater. They are truly just trying to keep themselves or as in my case, their child, safe.
-If you are at a party with a buffet and I am there with my daughter, don't think we are rude if we always dish up first for my daughter. We go through the line and take what we know is safe before others dish up and cross contaminate things.
-Also don't be offended if you have a friend that either has an allergy or has a child with an allergy and they ask a million questions about what is in the food, how it was prepared, and dig through your trash to read the labels on all the ingredients used. Or after all that if they kindly refuse to eat it, just because they are not sure and don't want to chance it.
-If you are cooking for someone with an allergy think about the way you do things in your kitchen. Think about what utensil has touched what before it touches something else. Wash your pans and cooking utensils thoroughly. In my home I wash in and I wash out. I wash after I use a pan that has been used for an allergen food and I wash it again before I cook with it the next time.
(Also don't get offended if I wash plates and utensils at your house before I let my daughter use them. Or if I wipe off tables and counters. Just look at it as a free kitchen maid.)

-One more example of Cross Contamination is food manufacturers and labels. I don't have time to get into all that in this post, but I will just say that most of your allergy friends will have certain brands and things they trust and ones they don't. They will also read every label even if it is a brand they trust.  So my last tip is to always let someone with allergies, or their parent see a label of what they are eating. Tell them the brand. Don't feed them something and say it is such and such, you can have that. Let them know if it is a different brand. Knowing the brand is important. For instance, my daughter can have fruit snacks for the most part. But their are certain brands of fruit snacks that have a cross contamination warning for  peanuts and milk. So l need to know the brand of fruit snack before she eats it.