Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Allergy friendly foods & Peanut Free Planet

While Talli does not eat much, having safe food around is always a concern. She is currently eating 100-200 calories a day, but since some she is sensitive enough to some allergens that being in the room with them or touching a contaminated surface and then biting her nail can cause a severe reaction we are always cautious.

Tree nuts are one of her most serve allergies, peanuts not so much, but peanut allergies tend to get worse with time. She is also on a very low protein diet, so that adds quite a bit of a complication. Cambrooke Foods is known in the metabolic community for good tasting low protein foods, however, and this is the big one for us, they make peanut and egg containing products, so we assume their whole product line is contaminated. Usually, when I call a low protein food vendor about allergies and cross contamination I hear in a quick raised voice, "Ma'am, we make foods for metabolic disorders not allergies." And my response is..., "My child has both." It has been far easier to get the protein counts on allergy friendly foods, some of which are very low protein than find safe low protein foods.

Here are a few companies that we enjoy:
Applied Nutrition- Low protein chocolate (only appealing to the low-protein crowd) that is allergy safe http://www.medicalfood.com/ They do have cute Easter shapes.
Ener-g- They do manufacturer with some nuts at some facilities, so a call to them is usually needed http://www.energ.com/ We all like their pretzels and Gourmet crackers.
CherryBrook Kitchen- Allergy friendly baking products- cake, cookie, pancake, and brownie mixes and ready made cookies. http://www.cherrybrookkitchen.com/ Save the box bottoms as you can redeem them for mixes, t-shirts, cupcake holders, and an ipod. Target carries some of these as does Jewel/Albertsons and Whole Foods.
Enjoy Life- cereal, cookies, granola bars, etc. Some items are too high in protein for us to use. http://www.enjoylifefoods.com/
Divvies- Cupcakes, popcorn, cookies and candy. http://www.divvies.com/ Amazon sometimes sells them as well. Our local peanut-free restaurant stocks them as does Disney World.

Ok, so the last one is Peanut Free Planet http://www.peanutfreeplanet.com/. We have ordered from them a few times. I am preparing for our annual Easter Egg Hunt that we host and was trying to come up with candies to put in the eggs. I also give out prizes as well. I was thrilled to find chocolate foil covered eggs to go into the plastic eggs as well as an inexpensive chocolate bunny to give out as a prize. So here is my order:
Amanda's Own Chocolate Baby Bunny $2.69/2oz (2, one for a prize and one for ODS's basket)
Comet MiniChick milk Chocolate Egg Bag $19.99/2.98lbs
Gimbal's Cherry Lovers 9 Cherry Favorites (for DH & DSs baskets)
Sunbutter $4.49/1lb Nearly the same taste as peanut butter and slightly better taste than Trader joe's brand

The chocolate is likely something Talli won't like the taste of because she is used to the low protein version, but at least it will be safe around her.

Happy Egg Hunting everyone!

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