Study on Emotional Impact of Food Allergy

Over the summer I participated in this joint survey offered by Galaxy Foods and FAAN. The results have been published and I have a few comments:

• I'm thrilled to see that more than 50% of the parents surveyed believe their child's teachers and administrators have an excellent or good understanding of their child's allergies. We've come a long way, baby!
• I'm concerned to see that 50% of parents feel frustrated in dealing with their child's food allergy. Surprisingly, 31% report feeling isolated and alone. I know I felt this way 10 years ago, but I hoped that with so many blogs, websites and support groups, frustration and isolation would be low. We obviously still have a long way to go.
• 69% of parents believe that their food allergic child's life has been somewhat or significantly impacted by their food allergy. I certainly see an impact in meeting nutritional needs and in limitations for social opportunities.
• The limited social opportunity is further shown by the result stating 71% have never eaten in a restaurant due to food allergy concerns. Again, the awareness and information out there is so much better. Sites like AllergyEats help families make safer decisions. That said, I do get this one. Many feel that it's just not worth the risk.

Did anything jump out at you when you looked through the results? The bottom line for me is that I feel like we're moving ahead with food allergy information, but for those of us in the thick of it, it can't be fast enough.

The Misconceptions of Food Allergy

In a news release from the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, Dr. Ruchi S. Gupta revealed that an online survey of 2148 U.S. adults shows many misconceptions about food allergy.

More than 66% of those surveyed believe that a daily medicine can be taken to prevent a food allergy reaction.
Nearly half of the respondents said there is a cure for food allergy.
Over 40% said that food allergy reactions could be prevented by means other than strict avoidance.

Hmmm...we're not doing a very good job of educating others about food allergy. These people are our teachers, principals, nurses, grandparents, bus drivers, neighbors, babysitters, coaches, scout leaders. Many of them are not getting it and that can be dangerous to our children.

Take every opportunity to inform others of the facts:

There is no cure for food allergy.
There are no medicines available to prevent a food allergy reaction.
Avoidance of the food is the only way to prevent a reaction.

Read the full news article here.

Have You Taken The Food Allergy Survey?

If you're a FAAN member (and if not, why not?), be sure to take their survey. It's 56 questions long, but many of those are "yes" or "no" answers or responding to a question on a number scale. It appears that FAAN is gathering info about how their members use them as a resource, as well as what other ways members get food allergy information.

I hope to see the results at some point. I think that for many years, FAAN was the only game in town for food allergy information. Now there is a great deal of information on the web. FAAN remains one of my most trusted sources, though.