May Contain...

Strange Canned Foods

2008-02-11T08:16:00.000-07:00

Not only may contain, but DO contain (gulp)! Blergh! Could you eat these strange canned foods?

(hamburger, whole chicken, tongues, cheese, bread, whale meat, fish mouths [THAT one looks gross!], scorpions, roasted crickets with eggs, silk worm pupae)

(hope you didn't read that over lunch)

Baby Clams - can you imagine?!?

2008-02-10T11:58:00.000-07:00

Wow, finally found something else worth posting:

A winning entry?

2007-11-14T21:50:00.000-07:00

Certainly haven't run across any good labels of late, but maybe this post will contain a winning entry for the iPod Touch contest being run by PriceCanada.

Wacky Warning Labels

2007-01-11T07:46:00.000-07:00

The Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch website has a wonderful website dedicated to Wacky Warning Labels! Visit it to learn such useful tips as, "don't use a lit match or open flame to check fuel level", and "Don't try to dry your phone in a microwave oven." Fun stuff

Technorati Tags: labels, dumb

Personal labeling

2006-11-27T10:43:00.000-07:00

OK, another actually useful bit of information. Here's a site called AllergyCards.com that allows you to enter your own text (name, address, emergency contact info, type and severity of allergy) and it will output a nice wallet-type card for you or your loved one to carry around. Of course you could do this with MS Word, but this is a nice little application.

That's a lot of cosmetics!

2006-09-28T09:23:00.000-06:00

I was just reading the current issue of Allergic Living Magazine, and there's a brief article about how new labeling laws for cosmetics go in to effect in Canada on November 17th. Basically ingredients have to be in plain English after that date, so "lactis lipida" becomes "milk lipids", etc. (apparently everything's currently in Latin, which afaik was never the language of the common people!). You can read more about the new regulation in this Health Canada pdf.

What really caught my eye though, was the following statistic: "...each Canadian, on average, uses between six and 12 cosmetic products every day..." Holy Crap! That doesn't say each Canadian woman, but each Canadian. Let's see, I use deoderant each day, and shampoo, and soap. So if I'm using 3, someone out there is using at least 9, just to get to the lowest average number. What are you people doing to yourselves!!!!!

And Cauliflower too!

2006-08-08T16:04:00.000-06:00

Broccoli

2006-08-08T15:57:00.000-06:00

Gosh, I sure hope so!

Which avoidance for peanut allergic children?

2006-07-11T21:11:00.000-06:00

OK, I know I said this wasn't going to be a blog about peanut allergies, but I don't have anywhere else to store related stuff like this. Was just notified of a preprint article appearing in PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine. The article is in French, but the abstract is in English, and it suggests that instead of trying to avoid all contact with any trace of peanuts (even the products that "may contain peanuts - see the connection?), folks should instead only worry about the visible nuts, and not the invisible stuff. Here's the abstract:

We analyzed, from the literature, the balance benefit/risk of a strict avoidance of peanut in children with peanut allergy. The benefits of a strict avoidance diet seem limited: reactions to the low doses and to the peanut oil refined are rare and most often slight. It is not proven that a strict avoidance facilitates the cure of allergy. On the other hand, strict avoidance could induce a worsening of allergy, with deterioration of quality of life, creation of food neophobia. In case of cure of allergy, it is difficult to normalize the diet after a strict avoidance. Outside of the rare sensitive patients to a very low dose of peanut, for which a strict avoidance is counseled, the report benefits risk is in favor of the prescription of adapted avoidance to the eliciting dose. For the majority of the peanut allergic children, it seems to us that the avoidance can and must be limited to the non hidden peanut.

Do you try to avoid any food that may contain nuts, or do you only watch out for the obvious ones?

Ewww, not spiders!

2006-07-06T13:28:00.000-06:00

Here in Canada all our labels are bi-lingual, English and French. Makes label reading a little interesting, in that the French word for "peanut" is "arachides". Even though I know that, more than once I've glanced at the label of something quickly and that word has jumped out at me as "arachnids"!!!

peut contenir des traces d'arachides

See? May contain traces of spiders! ;-)

Colour in Cheese

2006-06-29T15:35:00.000-06:00

Here's the package of cheese that pushed me over the edge and prompted me to actually start the blog. It's a package of Armstong Cheddar Cheese (medium) purchased in British Columbia that states, "may contain colour". Really? I thought milk came out of the cow this colour!

The Beginning - The May Contain Blog

2006-06-29T15:19:00.000-06:00

My son has a peanut allergy, and since we learned about it almost three years ago now, my wife and I have been students of the ingredients label - always searching for the "may contain trace amounts of peanuts" warning. We're lucky here in Canada that there are pretty decent labeling laws, in that if there's any "may contain" statement and it doesn't say peanuts, we feel pretty safe about the product. Legislation was passed late last year in the US that means you should be seeing a lot more detail about which products contain allergens there as well.

That's all fine and dandy, but this isn't a blog about allergens. It's a blog about all the stupid stuff that products "may contain". My very favorite dates back to before we even had kids, and I'll be sure to find an example for you, but it's basically any package that "may contain one or more of the following:" ?!??! WTF - you don't know what you've put in your product?!? One or more of the following? Sheesh.

So if you've got a funny "may contain" story, send it on to maycontainblog@gmail.com. If you can include a picture that'd be great, but at least let us know the name of the product and the country you're in (yes, for some reason the same product made in a different country may have different ingredients, or at least different labeling requirements). Thanks, and enjoy the absurdity!