Free Snacking: Rule Breaker Snacks

Because shopping at the grocery store for a kid with multiple, severe food allergies is so hard, I am always interested when I see new products that are “allergy friendly” or “top 9 allergen free.” I am skeptical, sure, but always interested. I am skeptical because generally speaking, things that naturally don’t have dairy milk in it (like a good coconut milk curry) taste much better than when you start to try to emulate how real dairy should taste (mac and cheese… just shouldn’t be attempted without cheese. Or milk. Or butter. I don’t care what the recipe says, a puree of butternut squash and nutritional yeast does not cheese sauce make.) So, when cookies or crackers or snack bites go all in and try to take away all allergens including: eggs, milk, wheat, and nuts… it’s quite an undertaking. So for the next few weeks, I am going to be reviewing some top 9 allergen free snacks (only 1 per week because they are ridiculously expensive. Remember last week?)

First ingredient chickpea flour. Next? Gimme that palm oil.

Up first is Rule Breaker Snacks- a brand I was first introduced to on Shark Tank. Usually, I save my Shark Tank impulse buys for my family’s Christmas gifts (What’s that? My brother who lives in Puerto Rico actually didn’t want a warm winter hat that has a beard attached for Christmas? And why exactly not?!), but these I needed for myself. I couldn't say no to them even after they didn’t get a deal when the sharks didn’t like them. To be fair, it seems unlikely that the sharks have had a lot of experience with wheat, dairy, egg, nut free cookies. And if you’re comparing allergen friendly cookies to a regular cookie, you are probably going to be disappointed (see? top 9 allergen free: skeptical, but interested).

Rule Breaker goes above and beyond the calling for safe food by also claiming less sugar AND more protein (because chickpeas the first ingredient).  I mean, that’s a lot. Chickpeas, less sugar, vegan, gluten free, no nuts, no peanuts. If these are even edible, I say it’s a win.

They make three different regular flavors of “bites” and bigger blondies/brownies that have similar flavors. We got a sample pack of the bites- birthday cake, deep chocolate brownie, and chocolate chunk blondie. Guess what? They are ALL edible! Against all odds! Here are the nutrition facts compared to Chips Ahoy cookies:

Protein… definitely not packed. But lower sugar? Yes! They have date paste in them, which seems to be a common ingredient in allergen free cookies. Not only do dates taste sweet, but they also help with the texture when you can't use eggs and dairy.

The chocolate chunk blondie was our family’s least favorite- the date aftertaste really comes through. Plus, really, what is a blondie? A cookie with an identity crisis? A brownie without the best part? Why? Just why? The deep chocolate brownie was next on the list, the chocolate flavor covering the date paste a little more thoroughly. Surprisingly, the birthday cake (with WHITE CHOCOLATE?!?!) was the best. Yes, I, the person that wrote a two paragraph ode to milk chocolate mini eggs just two weeks ago, now say that the snack bite without real chocolate (I said what I said) was better than the other flavors. I don’t know why! I’m usually not easily swayed by colorful sprinkles! But it really is good. The date flavor hits up front and then dissolves away just leaving you with a delicious cake/cookie mashup. All three bags got a thumbs up from my kids (that’s the most review I could get from them). While they are soft and chewy, they aren’t fudgy like a brownie (or a “blondie” whatever that is), I think they are all much closer to a soft baked packaged cookie (thus the comparison to Chips Ahoy).

Rule Breaker Snack Bites: Not good enough for the sharks, but good enough when you’ve tried other sad, sad gluten free, vegan brownies without nuts!

How Expensive Food Allergies Are

Do you remember when you could go grocery shopping and compare prices rather than ingredient labels? *sigh* Those were the days.

With inflation and supply chain shortages and entering year three of a global pandemic, I think it’s a good time to point out that grocery shopping with food allergies can be an insanely expensive endeavor. For one, food alternatives are (almost) always more expensive than the real thing. Sunbutter is 2.6x* more expensive than peanut butter. Oat milk is 2.3x more expensive than cow’s milk. The winner in this category? All purpose “wheat free” baking flour is 8x (EIGHT TIMES!) more expensive than the run of mill (pun very much intended) wheat flour. The only cheaper alternative I could find? Using the dry “egg replacer” powder rather than real eggs in baking. Don’t worry, though, the egg replacer in the refrigerated section that you cook up like scrambled eggs is still way more expensive.

Also, more expensive? Products made from the top 9 allergen replacements. Wheat free bread: more expensive. Dairy free cream cheese: more expensive. Dairy free yogurt: more expensive. Because the original products are more expensive, everything down the line is more expensive, too.

Another problem? Having to deal with possible cross contamination. Let’s say you can have almonds, but not peanuts. The regular jar of almond butter is $0.52/ounce, while Barney's (the brand we have to buy that is made a facility separate from peanuts) is $0.87/ounce. If you can eat graham crackers, the store brand ($0.15/ounce) which sometimes contains milk, is always cheaper than the safe Honey Maid crackers without milk ($0.31/ounce). I never thought I would care about brand name ("Cream Between" chocolate sandwich cookies taste fine, okay?), but now I am forced to (only the best name brand processed cookie sandwich whose cream inexplicably doesn't contain real cream for my kid, please).

We are extremely lucky that we can pay extra for safe food. I do not know what we would do if we were adding food allergies to food insecurity. The school lunches in our town have a special disclaimer that due to substitutions and commercial kitchens, they are “unable to guarantee that any food item will be completely free of food allergens.” I’m sorry, what? There are so many kids that rely on school lunch and there’s no way to make sure it’s safe? Well let’s add that on to the list of things that need to change.

This quick exercise I did comparing the price of foods just scratches the surface of how expensive food allergies can be. Once you add on constantly having multiple doses of epinephrine on hand, frequent visits to the doctor for allergy testing, possible trips in an ambulance to the emergency department… the costs really come through wherever you look.

*All of my prices were chosen from Amazon.com. I tried to use the most common products in midrange prices (rather than picking the most or the least expensive) to make the comparisons fair. The numbers change a little bit based on which ones I picked, but one thing stayed constant- eating with food allergies IS ALWAYS MORE EXPENSIVE. 

Giving Up the Chocolate Bunny

Okay, I don't really understand why my kids like these so much. But look! Bunnies!😍🐇🐰

Easter is almost here and it’s beginning to feel like all holidays are laden with food allergy concerns. This time of year, there are two things that immediately bring me back to my childhood Easter basket: Cadbury Cream Eggs and chocolate bunnies. A later in life discovery was how delicious Cadbury Minieggs are (why are they so much more delicious than other bite size chocolates? I'm glad you asked. 1) there’s a better chocolate:candy coating ratio 2) the candy coating is delicious 3) Cadbury milk chocolate doesn’t add a sour flavor of spoiled milk like Hersey’s does so it’s so creamy and so delicious. Really, if you can eat milk and soy, you need to go get a giant bag of these and prepare for your life to be changed forever. They are the perfect candy.)

ANYWAY, because I like love chocolate, all of my favorite Easter candies (and Halloween candies and Christmas candies and year round candies) all have at least milk in them, but usually peanuts or tree nuts or eggs, too. There are a few lists online of milk free chocolate bunnies or other allergen free chocolate bunnies, but they are hard to find. I haven’t seen any really, true safe chocolate bunnies (that aren't produced on the same equipment as milk chocolate and are produced in a safe factory without clouds of peanut dust) available at local stores. Buying online, paying for shipping, seems like a lot just to pass on one of my favorite Easter traditions.

But, you know what is readily available? Non-chocolate classic Easter candies that are ALLERGEN FREE already.

• Jelly beans
• Why are jelly beans associated with Easter? I'm not really sure. Nothing says spring like a bean? It's not really important. The important thing is they are allergen free (although a few flavors contain soy or coconut).
• Peeps 
• We can go back and forth on whether or not they are actually good (they aren't), but you can't deny they do well in an Easter basket
• Sour Patch Kids bunnies
• Okay, okay, not a classic Easter treat, BUT Sour Patch Kids continue to be my kids' favorite candy, so God bless them for making them into some bunnies!

So I guess what I really need to do is give up on my chocolate bunny nostalgia and embrace the new tradition of fruit flavored candies that my kids seem to love (and keep those minieggs all to myself). Happy Easter!

 

The Conundrum of Daycare Colds

Guys. My toddler has been sick for 4 weeks straight. Every time there’s a glimmer of hope that her symptoms are improving, she wakes up the next day with a fever and a cough and it’s back to the doctor. How does this relate to food allergies? Well, we are supposed to be incorporating cashews into her diet after she passed her oral food challenge. But she kept having symptoms after eating cashews. Was it cashew related? Or just virus related?

I mean just look at the possible food allergy symptoms that can also be caused by a virus:

• Itchy or runny nose and sneezing
• Yep. She’s been congested for a month.
• Hives
• When I think of hives, I definitely think allergic reaction but did you know that the most commonly identified trigger for hives in children is viral? This happened so much last year that my kid had to go on Zyrtec indefinitely after a virus. Every time we stopped antihistamines the hives came back. You know what makes a food allergy parent super worried? Random hives.
• Nausea, repetitive vomiting, severe diarrhea
• Check, check, and check. GI viruses are the worst.
• Shortness of breath, wheezing, repetitive coughing
• Yep. She was already doing all of that for weeks. And, when she’s sick with a dripping nose, her cough always gets worse while eating. What wonderful timing!

There are some symptoms that I don’t associate with viruses. But these aren't symptoms she's ever had with food allergies.

• Itchy mouth (mild) or significant swelling of tongue or lips (severe)
• Tight or hoarse throat, trouble breathing or swallowing
• Pale or bluish skin, faintness, weak pulse, dizziness

Her food allergy symptoms have always been runny nose, hives, repetitive throwing up, and coughing. If her baseline is a runny nose with a cough, how are we supposed to pick up on mild food allergy symptoms? This was especially difficult when she was younger and we were just introducing foods. No wonder I was so stressed out her first year. Every time she broke out into hives I would get out her Food Allergy Action Plan and listen to her breathing. It didn't matter if she hadn't eaten anything. Why was this baby's skin growing bumps?!

Let's just hope she better get better before her next allergy appointment! Last food challenge she sneezed one time and the allergist's stethoscope was out before I could say "bless you!"

Do you need an easy guide for possible food allergy symptoms? FARE has the best one I've seen. Just click on Emergency Care Plan for a downloadable, printable guide.

Staying in a Hotel with Food Allergies

Guys. We did it. We went stayed in a hotel with our toddler with allergies. We had been on vacation to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. We had been on vacation to the beach and stayed in a house with a kitchen. But, this was our first stay in a hotel. We stayed two nights at an indoor water park. There were a lot of restaurants in the facility and in the surrounding area, but we weren’t sure what to do for food over the three days.

My kid is allergic to peanuts, eggs, milk, and garlic. Peanuts, a fair number of people are allergic to so there’s good information online what restaurants have peanuts in them and which ones to avoid. Eggs and milk, while in the Top 9 allergens, are definitely harder to deal with, but presumably we could take her to a vegan restaurant and be totally safe from them. Garlic is really the wild card. Not only is garlic in almost every cuisine I can think of, garlic powder is even added to a lot of “plain” things. It’s in most chicken nugget breading. It’s in a lot of meat substitutes. It’s even on “salt and black pepper” flavored chips. I just can’t imagine a safe place for my kid to eat while she is allergic to all of these things. The only things that reliably don’t have garlic are sweet things and bakeries are a contamination festival for milk, eggs, peanuts, and tree nuts.

The website promised that they had lots of experience with food allergies and if we contacted them beforehand, they would make accommodations. Well, we were unable to email them. They didn’t answer the phone when we called. When we got there it was packed full of spring breakers so we decided this was not the time to venture into the world of food prepared by strangers.

This photo brought to you by our crying four year old demanding we take pictures of everything before we say good bye. But! Look at the minifridge! Microwave! Ample food prep counter! He was right! We did need a photo!

In our room, there was a minifridge, a microwave, and a small table. We ended up eating all of our meals in our room (partly because of food allergies, partly because of COVID). We brought easy things for breakfast- cereal, poptarts, and fruit. (No free continental breakfast? Ridiculous. Those are my least favorite kinds of hotels.) We brought all of our snacks- crackers, safe nut butters, safe snack bars. And, we brought all of the meals for our food allergy toddler- left over chicken and rice for the first night, tortilla wraps, and sandwiches. For lunch and dinner, we got take out for the rest of us.

And, you know what? We did it. We survived. Nobody went hungry. Everybody seemed content with the food selection. I packed enough food for the Armageddon and we just took the extra back home with us. Here are some tips if you are traveling and unable to find safe food at restaurants:

• Make sure the hotel room has at least a minifridge
• A freezer would be ideal (my kid did ask for dino chicken nuggets [the only safe frozen nugget in the land] for every meal), but at least with a minifridge we could bring one night of safe leftovers and keep jelly and vegan cream cheese cold.
  
• Bring paper plates and silverware
• Plates were so nice to have for breakfast, snacks, and our toddler's meals.
• Bring safe snacks and foods that are hard to find
• You never know what will be available at a different grocery store. We packed all the food because we were only staying a few nights and I didn’t want to go to the grocery store during the vacation.
• Don't forget your epinephrine!
• You didn't think I was going to forget that, did you?

A table, though not necessary, it pretty nice if you are going to eat every meal in the same small room.

Traveling with food allergies! Not easy! But, we did it!