Kitchen Confusion

 I think there is a lot of kitchen confusion in our local restaurants lately.  In the past 2 months I have had to send food back about 80% of the time.  The confusion seems to be what exactly is milk and what products contain milk.  So I thought I might try to clarify this for restaurants.  

Milk is Obviously milk, cheese, butter, cream, sour cream, yogurt and anything that contain those ingredients.   Your kitchen needs to know what contains milk.  Item that can contain milk are breads, coated French fries, almost all desserts.  Here is my plug to put fresh fruit on the menu for dessert. 

Milk is not mayonnaise, yes it is white but mayonnaise it is an emulsion of eggs and oil. 

For those of us allergic to milk we get tired of sending our food back.  Various reasons that I have sent food back.  My meal was coated with cheese, this is very common. Sour cream was covering my meal.  Butter was liberally applied to a milk free bun, not my meal.  My dry potato with chives on the side was covered with cheese and sour cream. My salad was covered with cheese and or sour cream.  

Now I always say I have a milk allergy and request that milk items be left off. I even go so far as to call them out.  I have done my part. Now it is time you do yours.   I even go to restaurant websites to see what is allergy friendly.  So I know what to order.  

By making my order right the first time saves you money.  It leaves me less frustrated.  You can also turn your table faster.  This all adds to your bottom line in a very tight economy.  

Food Allergies

I will pass up my planed Monday Blog in order to get this information out to as many people as possible.

Calling all people with food allergies: This is YOUR chance to weigh in as a national committee is creating new diagnosis and treatment guidelines.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is seeking public comment on a draft of Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Food Allergy. AANMA founder and president Nancy Sander is a member of the committee that's working on these guidelines.

The public comment period is open until May 3. Health care professionals and interested members of the public are encouraged to review the guidelines and participate in the open comment period by visiting the NIAID Food Allergy Clinical Guidelines public comment site at www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/foodAllergy/clinical/comments.htm.

"Food allergy is an important public health problem that affects millions of Americans, and may be increasing in prevalence," says NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, MD. "These draft guidelines provide information to a wide variety of health care professionals about how to diagnose and manage food allergy, and treat acute food allergy reactions."

The guidelines are based on an independent, systematic review of the scientific and clinical food allergy literature. Information gathered from the literature review was incorporated into a full report on the state-of-the-science in food allergy that will be made available after the publication of the final guidelines.

As part of the process of developing the guidelines, NIAID brought together a coordinating committee that included representatives from 33 professional organizations, advocacy groups and federal agencies. The role of the coordinating committee was to appoint an expert panel, review drafts, approve the final guidelines and develop a plan to distribute the final guidelines. The expert panel, composed of 25 members with expertise from a variety of relevant clinical and scientific areas, wrote the draft guidelines.
The guidelines cover the following topics:



· Definition and prevalence of food allergy

· Natural history of food allergy and closely associated diseases

· Diagnosis of food allergy

· Management of non-acute allergic reactions to food

· Management of acute allergic reactions to food, including anaphylaxis, a severe, whole-body reaction



"These guidelines represent a major commitment on the part of many people and organizations working to improve the care of individuals with food allergy," says Daniel Rotrosen, MD, director of the Division of Allergy, Immunology and Transplantation at NIAID. "The process of developing the guidelines has also helped us identify gaps in the current scientific knowledge that we can begin to address through future research."



All comments will be reviewed by the coordinating committee, expert panel and NIAID. Where appropriate, these comments will be used to develop final guidelines. The final guidelines are expected to be released by the fall of 2010.



More information on the development of the guidelines may be found at www3.niaid.nih.gov/topics/foodAllergy/clinical/.



NIAID conducts and supports research-at NIH, throughout the U.S., and worldwide-to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available at www.niaid.nih.gov.



The NIH includes 27 institutes and centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.



For more about food allergies, visit www.aanma.org or call 800.878.4403. You can also follow AANMA on Twitter and Facebook.