Welcome to The Food Allergy Way!

There's no better time to have food allergies than right now! Keep reading to see why.

“In addition to niche foods becoming more mainstream and accessible, specialty grocers such as Whole Foods Market and MOM’s Organic Market have continued to proliferate throughout the country, thus making it easier to stick to a strict dietary regimen”

Welcome!

If you're reading this blog post chances are either yourself, or someone you know, has recently been diagnosed with a food allergy, or even worse, multiple food allergies. Being diagnosed with a food allergy can be shocking, life-altering, and difficult to wrap your head around, but don't fret, because you and/or your loved one(s) are not alone. According to Food Allergy Research & Education, roughly 32 million Americans (1 in 10 adults, and 1 in 13 children) have food allergies, and the rest of the world follows a similar trend. Food allergies are seemingly becoming more and more common, yet, despite increasingly available information and greater huenrdee'rss tanding, food allergies are still an obstacle that many individuals struggle to overcome.

If you’ve been recently diagnosed, I understand exactly what you’re going through. I've been there myself. Those first few days post diagnosis can be a total shock, leaving you feeling lost and bewildered. After-all, tailoring a diet to circumvent food allergies requires conquering a major learning curve and lifestyle change. I assure you, however, that with time (and discipline, and self-control, and support) that navigating the world with food allergies becomes much easier, and eventually becomes second nature. Ultimately, there’s a silver lining to your recent diagnosis and although your new outlook on life may presently seem bleak, your future is promising, as there’s absolutely no better time to have food allergies than today!

At this very moment, there are more alternative solutions to your dietary woes than ever before! For example, as a person with food allergies, you’re not the only person on the planet with dietary restrictions, although you may feel that this is the case in your everyday life. Presently, there are movements across the globe focusing on improving physical health and/or saving the environment through responsible eating. Also, many people today manage food intolerances, such as celiac’s disease or lactose intolerance. Thankfully, the above mentioned dietary movements overlap with the dietary restrictions of those with food allergies, so feel free to look-up forums, recipes, and advice from people in those communities. I was able to take the first steps toward removing allergens from my diet by following a gluten-free/wheat free diet, for example, and working my way toward complete allergen removal from there.

An added benefit of having food allergies at this current moment is decreasing the consumption of many processed foods. There is increased awareness of the effects of consuming processed foods, which have been shown to contribute to diabetes, obesity, elevated cholesterol, hypertension, etc. (Reuters; Harvard School of Public Health). Since processed foods, and ultra processed foods, tend to include long ingredient lists, many of which may stoke allergic symptoms (In my case, xanthan gum and corn starch, among others), you’d greatly benefit from staying away from many processed items. You’ll inevitably have to cut back on processed foods due to your new dietary restrictions, and what you may initially view as a “con”, you’ll eventually acknowledge as a “pro”. Additionally, there is a current interest in consuming organic, and/or locally produced, raised, or grown food, which tend to include minimal or simplified ingredients, often excluding fillers, pesticides, and hormones, all of which you can do without.

Finally, there is greater access to allergy-friendly foods today than in previous years, and they taste much better than their predecessors! As a personal example, processed foods (and sauces) free from corn, soy, and wheat were much more difficult for me to find in supermarket chains when I was first diagnosed with multiple food allergies in late 2013, and I was forced to heavily rely on recipes found online to prepare the foods I loved. For example, on several occasions I attempted to make gluten-free tortilla shells from a recipe online that did not taste like, nor have the texture of, tortillas I’ve grown accustomed to. Today, however, in 2022 there are several tortilla alternatives free of wheat or other top food allergens, which has allowed me to ditch the unpalatable homemade tortilla shells I made early on in my food allergy journey. In addition to niche foods becoming more mainstream and accessible, specialty grocers such as Whole Foods Market and MOM’s Organic Market have continued to proliferate throughout the country, thus making it easier to stick to a strict dietary regimen with minimal allergic occurrences.

Personally, my life has drastically improved as allergy friendly foods have become more and more readily accessible, and I expect your life post-diagnosis to improve for the same reasons. Today, you can quickly find foods that are easily identifiable as allergen-free while shopping at your local supermarket, and due to the simplification and minimization of ingredients of processed foods, label reading has become much easier. As a result, shopping trips to the grocery store are much less burdensome, and much more gratifying. Overall, if you’ve been recently diagnosed with a food allergy or food allergies, there’s no need to stress or worry; be confident in knowing that this is a great time to be allergen-free!