Healthy Kids    

Just found out my child has severe food allergies. Now what?



Here's a guide on how to cope and adjust to a new lifestyle

image attributed to Michaela KobyakovImagine that you have just left the allergist's office, where you have been told that your child has severe, possibly even life-threatening allergies to one or more common foods.

Perhaps the doctor told you that ingestion of even a tiny amount of allergen could quickly lead to a very serious reaction. As the enormity of this diagnosis hits you, you begin to wonder how your child's condition will affect your family's life: How will you explain this to friends and caregivers? How will you create a safe school environment? What about social situations, cooking, grocery shopping, and more?


16 minutes to save her daughter's life.


To help answer these questions, Plumtree Press has posted "Coping with Severe Food Allergies: A Parent's Guide" at its website. The Guide can be found at www.FoodAllergyCookbook.com. Written by Linda Coss, author of What's to Eat? The Milk-Free, Egg-Free, Nut-Free Food Allergy Cookbook, leader of a food allergy support group and mother of a child with severe food allergies, "Coping with Severe Food Allergies" provides helpful information for parents whose children have been recently diagnosed with food allergies.

The American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology (AAAAI) estimates that up to 8% of the children in the U.S. are affected by food allergy and the ranks of the food allergic are increasing at an alarming rate.

"Coping with severe food allergies is a challenge that affects the entire family unit," explains Coss. "This Guide will help provide the growing number of families that are just starting out on the food allergy path with a 'road map' to some of the issues they must face."

Food allergy or irritant?