Things for Bubble Boy to Eat

As I've mentioned, I do have a toddler (we call him "Bubble Boy" because he would have to live in a bubble to avoid all of his allergies) who has many food and environmental allergies. Feeding him can be a challenge. I've found that the more homemade a meal is, the easier it is to make it allergy-free. In that respect it has been easy to make allergy-free meals for him, because I've always tried to avoid pre-packaged or heavily processed foods. Homemade is cheaper, people! However, every mom needs a short cut night. So, I do serve good old macaroni and cheese out of the box. I just scoop out a little macaroni for him before I put the cheese sauce on the rest of it. Easy.

What's hard is making two sets of cookies, or finding store-bought snacks or junk food without dairy, nuts, or soy. We've been at this for three and a half years now, and have learned it can be done. Here are some dairy-free, nut-free store-bought snack/junk foods we have bought for Bubble Boy (our third son). Soy is too hard to avoid, but we avoid it when we can. Mostly we just make sure it's not one of the main ingredients.

*Newman's Own Alphabet cookies
*Oreo cookies
*Bunny Grahams or Teddy Grahams (any flavor)
*most graham crackers
*Austin Choco, Vanilla, or Lemon Cremes
*most animal crackers
*most pretzels (NOT Goldfish pretzels!)
*"natural flavor" microwave popcorn
*Immaculate Baking Co.'s Vanilla Sugar, Chocolate Chunk, or Oatmeal Raisin cookies
*plain rice cakes
*Rice Dream Frozen Dairy Dessert
*Starkiss bars from DairyQueen
*most Italian ice or sorbet
*Sunbutter
*Earth Balance Natural Buttery Spread
*Roman Meal bread (basically the only wheat bread I've found without soy!)

Note: Bubble Boy can tolerate small amounts of soy. He only has a reaction to food allergens if he ingests them or gets them on his skin. He has no reaction if he breathes them. Some kids can't even breathe the peanut molecules! Also, I have found that foods warning of cross-contamination or "made in the same facility" as nuts, etc. don't seem to bother him. I call these "CYA" warnings. They are maddening. In any case, if you are searching for allergy-ree foods, try above suggestions at your own risk.

Another maddening thing is that companies change their ingredients all the time. I discovered that angel food cake mixes were dairy-free (and some other cake mixes as well). I was so excited because my from-scratch allergy-free cakes usually get spit out by unsuspecting party goers just wanting a yummy chocolate cupcake. Anyway, I had bought the angel food cake by Duncan Hines and Pillsbury. Both reaction-free. Next time I went to buy one, both brands had dairy! Beware.

Sunbutter and Earth Balance are great for making cookies and deserts for Bubble Boy. Sunbutter, made from sunflower seeds, can be used in place of peanut butter. Hello, no-bake cookies! Earth Balance is used in place of butter, but we don't use it much because of its soy.

Dairy-free chocolate? Yes, some chocolate can be dairy free if it's not milk-chocolate. Cocoa does not have dairy in it. Immaculate Baking Co. doesn't use milk-chocolate, so that's how Bubble Boy gets to eat chocolate chunk cookies. Finding out he could have chocolate almost made me cry tears of joy. Seriously, I ripped up the letter to Oprah about the poor kid who couldn't eat chocolate.

Allergies

I never gave a thought to food allergies until I found out my third son had them. My husband and I both have asthma, and he is allergic to trees, grasses, cats, and dogs. I am allergic to pine resin. No one in our families that we know of had food allergies. Weird.

I was starting the little guy on cereal at about four months. I mixed the rice cereal with water. He had it a few times and was fine (it takes the body a few exposures to build up the antibodies). Meanwhile, the whole family had a stomach virus.
Vomiting, diarrhea, misery. Everyone got better. Then, a few days later, third son started vomiting again. To call it projectile vomiting would be an insult to the force. It was a strange vomit with orangey-yellowy-greeny "mucus" in it. He did it repeatedly. Did I mention this was about two A.M.? My kids' favorite time to get sick. I thought it was odd that he would have the stomach virus just come back like that; I didn't think that was it.
I called and had the doctor paged and searched the web while waiting for her to call back. Bile came up (not literally- it came up as a topic in my search). I didn't even know what that was, but it didn't sound good. I found out bile is secreted from the liver. Oh good night, what was wrong with my baby??? Anyway, I also found some search results indicating food allergies. What? He only had rice cereal for crying out loud.

Doc called, and suspecting food allergies herself, she asked what was in the cereal. She said to read the ingredients. Rice and soy. Ding ding ding. Soy is one of the main food allergies, which surprised me at the time since it is in EVERYTHING. Doc said don't give him any more soy (duh) and to start keeping a log of what he eats and any reactions.

Well, I switched him to Earth's Best rice cereal, which has no soy. We went about our merry way of baby trying new foods, etc. By the way, he was breastfed, so he hadn't been exposed to cow's milk yet. One day he was crawling under the table when he was five or six months, and my oldest spilled his milk. It dripped through the crack of the table and onto the floor and his brother's head. Third son began playing in it, of course. I pulled him out from under the table and noticed he had a big red splotch a la Gorbatrov on his head. He had red splotches on his legs, arms, and hands and welts were beginning to appear. The splotch on his head was exactly the spot where the milk spilled and was still dripping down. It was no mystery milk was the culprit.
Being ignorant on the subject, I didn't even know a person could be allergic to cow's milk and not human milk.
We now knew he was allergic to soy and milk. He then went on, to our delight and convenience, to demonstrate an allergy to eggs. At this point we had him tested to find out just how much of a food weanie he was going to be. Verdict: dairy, soy, eggs, tree nuts, peanuts, coconut, sesame seed, dogs, grasses, trees (almost all things that grow outside), dust, blah blah blah. He was bubble boy. Oh, did I mention wheat? That was the killer. What the heck am I supposed to feed a kid who can't eat dairy, soy, or wheat? Styrofoam?
Fortunately, his doc said if he could eat something without a reaction, he could eat it even if the test showed he was allergic. Wheat was the only thing that fell into that category. Thank God. I didn't have to start making the kid bread from bean or rice flour. Who even knew those existed?

I have learned about a lot of new foods since the start of our allergic adventures. Rice milk, Rice Dream (his ice cream), vegan everything (we feel so new-agey), Sunbutter, Earth Balance. Soy is the hardest to avoid, but we have noticed he can tolerate small amounts.

He has his Epi-pen, and I have to warn babysitters and neighbor kids who want to share (I know, but they do exist) their M&Ms. He has outgrown his allergy to eggs and wheat. We will have one big dairylicious celebration when he outgrows the dairy (I was promised most kids do by age five). As a token of symbolism, we'll blow some bubbles to pop, too.

Third son is shown above eating egg-free, dairy-free, soy-free, nut-free cake. Let's just say he had the whole cake to himself. Notice he has taken the cake off of the plate, because he wants to look cool for all the other toddlers who wouldn't be caught dead with their food on the actual plate, people! Recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Vegan-Chocolate-Cake/Detail.aspx