Friday, December 30, 2005

Its About Fucking Time

Looks like the FDA is starting to be proactive for all of those with food allergies:

Beginning Jan. 1, food makers are required by law to label in "plain language" the eight allergen groups: tree nuts (including almonds, walnuts, and pecans), milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, peanuts, soybeans and wheat. Labels must either use parentheses to clarify that, for instance, "whey" or "casein" is a milk product, or must note at the end of the list that the product "contains" a specific allergen.

And, even working on changing labels to help those with celiac disease:

For millions of people, gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye, triggers an autoimmune reaction, attacking the small intestine. Sometime before August 2006, the FDA will issue a proposal to allow voluntarily use of the words "gluten free" on food labels, though the rule isn't likely to be finalized until 2008. But companies already are using their own definitions to label products as "gluten-free."

You can read the whole article here.

I just hope that the FDA regulates mono- and diglycerides and other derivatives of wheat as gluten products, otherwise it will be a waste of their time.

Now, when are the restaurants going to join the bandwagon?

1 comment:

Marshamlow said...

A baby step in the right direction, yeah. My Lily is allergic to corn too, I just found out the Citric Acid comes from corn, so most baby food she cannot have. We were going on a trip and I thought it would save time to grab a couple of jars of toddler veggies for the trip and it made her have a reaction. I am was thinking citric acid would be something from a citrus fruit. Oh well. I am sticking to our plan for now, it took me over a year to find a reasonable amount of variety of food for her and experimenting only leads to bad reactions.

Happy New Year! May we all have a year free from adverse reactions to food!