"My name is Sadia and I am a mom of not one but two multiple food allergic children. They are allergic to dairy, wheat (not celiac but allergic), eggs, vinegar, red lentils, nuts and my son is also allergic to fish"
My first encounter with food allergies was when I started giving solids to my first born. I fed my daughter chicken, she immediately had a reaction. As I had never encountered such a severe reaction before I did not know what to do or what it was even. All I knew was that something was wrong, I called Telehealth (a phone service, where nurses advise what to do). The nurse said put the phone down and immediately call 911. I called the ambulance, we went to the hospital and my daughter was kept under observation, almost for the whole night. She was diagnosed with food allergies at the age of eight months. This was 13 years ago.
Back then there were hardly any allergy friendly products like OhhFoods, available in stores. I had to make everything from scratch at home. As you can imagine, some were a hit some were total disasters :). However, for the sake of feeding my kids, I learned and learned quickly.
Over these thirteen years, I have come across all sorts of reactions from people. I have had people tell me you are making it up or asking what actually happens if they eat a certain food, in disbelief. Or if we refuse a certain food, they will offer another food that has another allergen in it, and I have to keep explaining and refusing. It gets pretty annoying and embarrassing sometimes.
However, the one thing that everybody asks is what do I feed my kids? Well my answer to this is a lot different now than it was a few years ago, thanks to snacks such as OhhFoods.
"I hope that we can raise awareness and also have a wider variety of snack options and restaurants available, where people with allergies can enjoy themselves, without the fear of a reaction" - Sadia
