If you have a child with these allergies, food labels can be very helpful, and there are all kinds of products and books that provide "allergy-free" options.
If you have a child whose allergies are not in the top eight, like mine, good luck. There is nothing on the label to help you identify the hundreds of corn derivatives in products, and all the so-called "allergy-free" products and recipes likely have the very foods your child needs to avoid. This is what I am dealing with right now. My daughter, 20 months old, is allergic to rice, corn, and oats. She also must avoid milk and soy, but those are on the top eight and are easily identified. Try finding bread, cereal, or crackers without rice, corn, or oats. Not happening.
My daughter has suffered with these allergies since birth. She immediately had trouble with her formula and at one month old, her pediatrician put her on Alimentum, Similac's hypoallergenic formula. It helped, but she still had eczema, skin rashes, cradle cap, and pretty much constant diarrhea. At least switching her to this formula eased the three hours of crying she had been doing each night. When we began solid foods, she would projectile vomit certain foods, and the diarrhea got worse. Her cheeks were bright red most of the time. When it was time to switch from formula to milk, we had already suspected milk was a problem, but we tried it. No luck. We tried Lactaid. It got worse. The doctor suggested soy milk. She threw up eight times. Finally, I met a very nice girl that had this same problem as a child, and she suggested goat's milk. We ran it by the doctor, got the approval, and gave it a shot. It definitely helped, but it was obvious she still had problems with something. I made an appointment with an allergist, and they gave her a skin prick test and a blood test. Both were negative. I was at a loss. I contacted the Kids with Food Allegies Foundation on Facebook and gave them the rundown of what we had gone through. They suggested her allergies might be cell-mediated rather than IgE mediated and to have a patch test done. I called the allergist with the suggestion and scheduled the appointment. The patch test came back postive to rice, corn, and oats. Finally, we had answers. Due to her history with milk and soy, the allegist wanted her to continue to eliminate them from her diet. When we began eliminating these foods, we saw immediate improvement in her digestion. Her skin was not seeing improvement. Suddenly, she had bouts of diarrhea again, which I traced to the hidden corn ingredients. That is the reason I began this blog. Corn is in EVERYTHING! It is almost impossible to avoid not only because of its prevalence in foods but mainly because you cannot find out from a company if the food contains a corn derivative or not. We found out quickly that if your allergens are not in the top eight list, it will be very difficult to manage.
I have called countless companies to ask about corn in the products. I get answers like, "There shouldn't be any corn in there," and "It has citric acid, which may or may not contain corn sugar." Thanks a lot. That helped. My favorite answer is, "We can't tell you if our natural flavors contain corn because that is our secret ingedient. If we tell you, you could make it yourself and wouldn't need to buy it from us." I don't want to make it myself! I want to know of my daughter can eat it without having a reaction. It should be unlawful to withhold allergy informations from consumers.
As I find recipes and products that are suitable for my daughter, I will share those to help others with cell-mediated allergies find food they can safely eat. This should not be so hard. If you have a similar problem, please share your story and any products you may have found that work for you. Maybe together we can keep our kids safe in an allergy-unfriendly world.
