The recipes contained in this site are for people with food intolerances, however, you may be able to adapt them for people with food allergies by ensuring your food preparation area and the foods you buy comply with the persons requirements. As food allergies can be life threatening, this is absolutely essential.
If you are preparing food for someone with a food sensitivity (especially if it is an allergy):
- Ask them what their needs are and how sensitive they are
- Read this website and links www.allergyfacts.org.au
Labels
In Australia you will see information on labels such as:
- The ingredient list
- Warnings
The ingredient list
The ingredient list is where most of the ingredients in that food are listed (in some countries some ingredients don’t need to be listed).
Foods may not appear on the ingredient list with their common name eg. Milk and milk products may be on ingredient lists as:
- Milk, milk solids, etc.
- ….casein, caseinate
- ….lactoglobulin
- …Whey
- …lactose
- dairy
- In addition additives eg. colour caramel 150a may be derived from dairy and this isn’t written, only the additive name or number is written, so you need a good additive decoder. I use The Chemical Maze by Bill Stratham.
Warnings
Some warnings you may see are:
- Warning this food contains:….which ever allergen/s it contains
- Warning this food was processed on equipment which also processes…..whichever allergen/s
- May contain traces of…..whicever allergen/s it may contain traces of
- Contains……..whichever allergen/s it contains
If you (or someone you are cooking for) has an anaphylactic reaction to certain foods, then you need to avoid all traces of that allergen, and foods being prepared on the same equipment. Check out this link at allergyfacts.org.au for more information.
If you are at all uncertain about what level of avoidance you need, then you need to discuss this with your doctor or allergy specialist.
Generally, if you have food intolerance, then you are likely to be able to tolerate traces of the food which you are intolerant to, eg. something that was processed on equipment that also processed dairy, but itself, doesn’t actually contain dairy.
Please check that all the ingredients comply with your level of requirement.
