Food Allergy Awareness Month

May is Food Allergy Awareness Month so I dug up a few interviews I’ve done about living with food allergies for Brit + Co. and Well + Good.

I deff compare it to an invisible illness that no one truly understands unless you have it.

The anxiety. The 24/7 stress of fearing for your safety or coming in contact with an allergen. The sadness of having such a restricted diet. The annoyance of people constantly asking you ‘what can you eat?’ Wishing you could eat the same meals as your kids. Having to sit at restaurants and watch people eat or gush over how it’s the best thing they ever had. Eating the SAME thing for every meal for YEARS. The food challenges and testing. Searching for safe foods and then being so upset if they get taken off the market. The feeling when you are so close to being able to eat something but then reading that one ingredient to ruin it for you. Yelling at family for leaving crumbs on the counter or bringing home something with sesame seeds and then vacuuming 500 crumbs to make sure you got up all the ones that spilled. Hospital visits (when I was pregnant). Carrying allergy meds and Epi-pens everywhere. Praying your kids don’t have allergies. Worrying my family has allergens on them and then they try to hug or kiss me. Missing out on holidays and birthday cakes. Washing your hands constantly. The panic when you realize you ate something by accident. The frustration of wanting to eat healthy and be healthy but your body can’t eat fruits or veggies. Skipping events because hosts are paying expensive costs per plate and you can’t eat. Bringing your own food everywhere. Not being able to travel unless you have a hotel with a kitchen and a rental car to find food and hope you can find food you can eat where you are…. I could go on. This is what I deal with daily.

Some helpful tips to help those of us with food allergies. Wash your hands in public when you eat. If your kid ate peanut butter and touches something, think of the kid with peanut allergies who might touch that door handle next. Don’t bring nuts on planes. Try not to eat allergens near people you know who are allergic. Don’t send your kids to school with allergens. Clean up after you eat. Educate yourself on food allergies and how you can help others.

We all need to be aware and make the world safer for people whose lives are ironically at risk from the thing that keeps us alive.