As a Chef you learn a lot about food allergies and different dietary requirements and the one that I dread the most is a customer with an anaphylactic nut allergy.
As far as I know a few nut crumbs can be enough to kill someone with a serious nut allergy, it must be so restrictive for people who suffer from it.
Nuts used to be a main staple of my diet, until I met my wife. My wife has a severe peanut and tree nut allergy, we have to check the ingredients on everything because anything that says “may contain” or " made on shared equipment" is potentially a trip to the hospital and just not worth the risk. Soft serve is some of the only ice cream she can have when we go out because of potential cross contamination from the scoop. We have to ask everyone what kind of oil they fry in if we go out to eat.
Mostly we don’t go out to eat, we just cook for ourselves and are very diligent about checking ingredients and the allergy warnings. I’ve bought chocolates and all kinds of stuff, even lentils one time, that I read through the ingredients and didn’t see any nuts or anything, but somewhere not near the ingredients is the allergy warnings saying may contain and I missed it.
It’s all worth it.
This is a strange thing to read. Because I am either a time-traveler or confused. I thought we already started treating peanut allergies with exposure at a young age. I might be wrong though, it’s just what I’ve got off of memory.
Perhaps it’s because it’s powder instead? Or the age, that could be it. Hmm. *Reading the title, it’s for sure the age thing.
So what we’ve been doing is pelting babies with peanuts untill they get over it. The results have been interesting but surprisingly good in a odd way.