My Favorite Foods, Food Allergy Friendly Style!

Hi there! Today's post is going to be about how I can enjoy foods that people without food allergies eat. Some things I obviously can't eat, but I can eat similar to what others eat. Check it out!

The foods I have to avoid are dairy, tree nuts, and sesame seeds. I'll tell you a little about the substitutions and strategies we've developed throughout my life. I'll also tell you about my egg allergy and how we avoided that (but I don't need to avoid eggs anymore because I'm no longer allergic to them!)

Dairy: 

Dairy is definitely difficult to avoid. Dairy is in cow's milk (duh!), all sorts of cheeses, ice cream, yogurts, sour cream, cream cheese, butter, margarine, some types of cookies, cakes, cupcakes, and pastries that you buy at a grocery store, cereals (and not just chocolate cereals), granola bars, chocolate and other types of candy, marshmallows, certain chips, popcorn, whipped cream/any sort of heavy cream, cottage cheese, and even more. Dairy is in a lot of foods, drinks, and products, so having a dairy allergy has definitely been a huge challenge. I can still eat a lot of foods though. Companies like Silk make delicious alternatives for things milk and ice cream. Instead of drinking cow's milk, my whole family drinks Almond milk (super yummy! I'll talk more about why I can have almonds but not any other types of tree nuts later.) Instead of cheese, we buy soy cheese, which instead of being made from dairy, it's made from soybeans. We also buy something called So Delicious (basically soy ice cream) instead of ice cream, soy yogurt instead of yogurt, soy sour cream instead of sour cream, soy cream cheese instead of cream cheese, soy margarine instead of butter or margarine, a certain type of chocolate bar called EnjoyLife instead of regular chocolate, coconut cream instead of whipped cream, you get the idea. I have an abnormal amount of soy in my diet only because it's one of the easiest substitutions. I used to drink soy milk when I couldn't eat almonds, but now I drink almond milk because it got some of the soy out of my diet.

Tree Nuts: 

I have an anaphylactic allergic reaction if I eat any type of tree nut besides almonds. This means I get a very bad, life threatening allergic reaction, which is why it's especially important for me to stay away from tree nuts.The reason I can have almonds is because I did a challenge for them and I luckily outgrew them. I now love eating almonds and they're so delicious and I'm very grateful that I can eat them. Because I can eat almonds, my mom and I will be trying to have me outgrow another type of tree nut this month in hopes that I can someday eat lots of types of tree nuts. Tree nuts are in lots of breads and baked goods, but they can also be found in granola bars, candies, and even strange things like lotions and face washes! (Dairy can also sometimes be found in lotions, but I've never found one!) I basically avoid any products with tree nuts in them, but if I'm baking at home and the recipe calls for walnuts or some other tree nut, I will usually just substitute almonds in.

Sesame Seeds:

Sesame seeds are by far the easiest allergy to live with out of all my allergies. The only things that I can't eat, as far as I know, because of sesame seeds are hummus and some types of rolls and breads, but that doesn't really matter that much to me because there are other sesame free breads that I eat and if I really want a similar type of dip as hummus, we make a bean dip for me. Luckily sesame seeds aren't found in as much foods as dairy is.

I used to be allergic to eggs but I outgrew my allergy a while ago and can now enjoy anything with eggs in it. I can't really remember what we used as substitutions, but I do remember it wasn't easy!

Thank you for reading this week's post. Talk to you next week!