Food Allergy Recalls

Sample Food Label

 Are you getting timely recall notices from food manufacturers when a product ingredient label is incorrect? The food allergy community counts on those labels to be right and I continue to be amazed at how many recall notices I get in my email box each week. If you haven't signed up for a recall service, here are a few options:

• FAAN's Special Allergy Alert Notices
• Food Safety's Allergy Alerts
• Canadian Food Inspection Agency
• The Food Allergy Foundation
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Check them out, choose the one you like and get those email alerts so you're aware of label errors.

Wait, Nutella isn't a Health Food?!?

Nutella and Food Allergies

I had to shake my head this weekend when I heard about the Nutella® lawsuit. Apparently some people watched TV ads for Nutella and believed the gooey, chocolaty spread was a health food. That in spite of the fact that the first ingredient listed on the label is sugar. 


"I don't have time to read ingredients when I'm grocery shopping. It would take me like 4 or 5 hours to shop," said San Diego mom Athena Hohenberg (the plaintiff behind the class-action suit) this weekend in a TV interview.


Welcome to our world. A world of reading food labels so you know what you're buying and feeding your family. Trust me, I'd like to not read food labels too. It sure would make for quicker grocery shopping and I could go on believing that carrot cake is a health food.


A couple of tips for people who eat food:

• don't trust advertisements by companies trying to get you to buy their food product .
• spend a few minutes reading the ingredient labels of the foods you eat and feed to your family. 

Many food allergy families would have avoided Nutella due to the nuts, dairy and soy clearly listed on its label, but if you happened to buy Nutella between Jan. 1, 2008 and Feb. 3, 2012, you can file a claim. 
 You may be eligible for up to $20 from the company.


However, if you choose to purchase more Nutella with your winnings, know that you're getting a spread of sugar, palm oil, hazelnuts, cocoa, reduced minerals, whey, soy lecithin and vanillin. 


I know, because it says so right on the label.

Food Allergy Labels

You gotta love mom-inspired ideas!

Check out these simple and easy to make labels by mom and designer Kori Clark. They are simple to read and attention-grabbing- just perfect for grandparents, babysitters, older siblings and young children with food allergies.

Thanks for sharing Kori!

Reporting a Mislabeled Food

We depend on food labels. If the label has incorrect information, someone with food allergies could have a severe, even fatal, reaction.

Quick thinking on the part of Crystal Johnson, who discovered chocolate covered peanuts in her pecan ice cream, may have saved lives. Peanuts were not listed on the label and should not have been in the ice cream. She has a friend with a peanut allergy and knew this could cause a serious reaction. Ms. Johnson contacted FAAN (Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network) and the FDA (Food and Drug Association) as well as Mars, the parent company for Dove who manufactured the ice cream product. She saved the container and the FDA sent someone to her home to test it. The product did indeed contain peanuts and was recalled.

That's how it's done.

By the way, Ms. Johnson did get a letter of apology from Mar's and coupons for free ice cream. Here's the entire article.

Scary Stuff

Everyone should check out this article in the Nov. 21, 2008 issue of the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune article spotlights an investigation they did on food manufacturers who mis-label their products and the failure of regulators to police these manufacturers. Incorrect ingredient labels are dangerous to everyone- food allergic, diabetic, those watching cholesterol, salt intake or weight. We trust those labels to be true.

Guess what? 47% of products recalled for hidden allergens in the past 10 years were never even announced to the public. When a label clearly says "does not contain wheat", we need to be able to trust that information.

After reading this article, it is obvious we have a long way to go. Our food manufacturers must be required to know what is in their product, report that on a label and immediately recall an item if the label is not accurate. Right now, if a recall is even issued, it takes on average, 32 days, to get the recall information to the public. Not good enough. Not even close.

Food allergy Alerts

I just retrieved a bunch of food allergy alerts from my e-mail in-box. This is when a food manufacturer voluntarily says "oops we messed up and put some ingredients in our product that isn't listed on the label". This is very scary info when you deal with life-threatening food allergies. Stay on top of these "oopses" by subscribing to:

http://www.foodallergy.org/alerts.html

You don't need to be a FAAN (Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network) member to sign up. Remember, always call the manufacturer of a product if you have any questions.

Get Rid of "May Contain..."Statements on Food Labels

THE FDA (Food and Drug Administration) is holding a public hearing today from 9 am to 4:30 pm to discuss clearing up vague statements on food labels. Hallelujah! Ever since the 2004 Food Labelling law went into effect, we have been bombarded with statements like, "may contain peanuts", "manufactured in a facility that uses eggs", processed on the same line as products containing dairy". These read to me like "don't sue us if someone has a reaction after eating our product". Vague statements are not helpful and downright confusing. Because of the 2004 law, we can now read a label and clearly see statements like "contains milk". That makes much more sense to most consumers than the word "whey" (which is from milk) in the middle of an ingredient list.

That said, there is more to do to make things clearer for those of us who purchase food. Food manufacturers should be able to be clear about what is, and what isn't, in the foods they sell. Most people recognize that there is no such thing as a 100% guarantee, but we need accurate, helpful information to make the best decisions possible.

You can read about the purpose of the FDA hearing here:
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/fr080808.html

I'll keep you posted about the results.

New Initiatives

"Five Steps Forward for Food Allergy" is FAAN's (Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network's) latest initiative brought to Capitol Hill this week. Basically, it is a call for national school guidelines, better public education, development of food allergy diagnosis and management, more funding for research and improved food allergy labeling on food items.

• The House of Representatives has already passed legislation for school guidelines and it is expected that the Senate will soon follow.
• More public awareness is up to those of us who deal with food allergies on a daily basis. We need to keep talking about food allergies and help educate others.
• As public awareness increases, awareness by healthcare professionals should also be on the rise. Hopefully the days of doctors telling us that our babies are "too young to have food allergies" will soon be a thing of the past. Hopefully the days of a healthcare professional saying "you don't need to carry an Epi Pen because your allergy isn't that severe" will soon be a thing of the past as well.
• The National Institute of Health's panel on food allergies has recommended a funding increase for research. As the number of Americans dealing with food allergies rises, we need to find answers as to why and how to stop this trend. Just type "federal government spending waste" in your favorite search engine and it is easy to find some money that could be redirected. The US government gives 19 million dollars a year to The National Fund of Ireland?!!? I have nothing against Ireland, but, huh?
  
• The The Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act of 2004 has certainly been a big help to anyone who wants to decipher ingredient labels. That said, the prevalence of precautions on labels stating "May Contain" to "Processed in a Facility" to "Made on Shared Equipment." is very difficult to interpret. Companies claim that they need to protect themselves. It just makes labels more confusing and not very helpful to consumers. These statements need to be regulated to further improve food labels.

See http://www.foodallergy.org for more information on the five initiatives.