Oh, yeah. I have been meaning to write this blog post for a very long time. I often find that people with celiac disease are not signed up for FAAN Alerts. Same for those with children who have life-threatening food allergies. Stop. I guess it would be really helpful to explain what FAAN is and does and what a FAAN alert looks like. FAAN stands for the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network. This is the link to their website: http://www.foodallergy.org/ FAAN has been helping people with IgE food allergies for about 20 years. They advocate for food allergy awareness, food labeling, and education. One of the best programs they have in my humble opinion is their FAAN Alert program.

You sign up through their website and you will receive food allergy and gluten or wheat alerts. Below are three examples of FAAN Alerts from this year.

October 11, 2011 Shrimp Allergy Alert Nestlé Prepared Foods Company is recalling a limited quantity of one variety of LEAN CUISINE® Dinnertime Selects which is mislabeled. The packaging identifies the meal as containing chicken, however, an error has been discovered and approximately 200 packages contain shrimp. The product possibly was shipped to retailers in Alaska, Florida, Idaho, Oregon and Washington state. The recall affects LEAN CUISINE® Dinnertime Selects Chicken Fettuccini/UPC code 13800-14880 with a production code of 1253595911G and a “best before” date of October 2012. Consumers who have purchased to the product may contact Nestlé consumer services at (800) 542-6935, 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday, to receive a full refund.  FAANTM (The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network) 11781 Lee Jackson Highway, Suite 160 | Fairfax, VA 22033-3309 | (800) 929-4040 MILK ALLERGY ALERT  Sept. 28, 2011 M & P Food Productions, LTD., is recalling several varieties of “Vareniki/Dumplings” due to undeclared milk and wheat. The products were sold in retail stores in Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina,Ohio, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. The products are packaged in 14-oz. sealed plastic bags that are distributed frozen. The recall affects the following products with “BEST BEFORE SEP 19 2011” through “BEST BEFORE MAR 19 2012:”   Bapehuku Dupling brand Vareniki cabbage, UPC 7 07163 02619 8, yellow and green background on packaging with green and black lettering. Bapehuku Dupling brand Vareniki potato & onion, UPC 7 0 7163 02616 7, yellow and brown background on packaging with brown and black lettering. Bapehuku Dupling brand Vareniki potato & mushroom, UPC 7 07163 02617 4, yellow and blue background on packaging with blue and black lettering. Bapehuku Dupling brand Vareniki farmer cheese, UPC 7 0716 302618 1, yellow and purple background on packaging with purple and black lettering. Bapehuku Dupling brand Vareniki sour cherry, UPC 7 07163 02615 0, yellow and red background on packaging with red and black lettering. Consumers may return the product to the place of purchase for a refund. Consumers with questions may contact the company at (718) 438-6421, Monday through Friday between 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. ET.   WHEAT ALLERGY ALERT  Aug. 17, 2011 Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc. is recalling “Winn-Dixie Choco Charm Chocolate Drink” due to undeclared wheat.    The products were sold in the dairy departments of Winn-Dixie and SaveRite stores in Alabama, Florida, Georgia,Louisiana, and Mississippi. The product is packaged in a 128-oz. (one gallon) clear plastic bottle with a yellow bottle cap and marked with the UPC code 21140-29830.   Consumers may return the product to the place of purchase for a refund. Consumers with questions may contact the company at (866) 946-6349.

In my humble opinion, individuals with celiac disease and gluten intolerance as well as those individuals with food allergies and food sensitivities or on the GFCF diet would do well to register to receive FAAN alerts. These are the kinds of notices that do not generally make it into the media spotlight. I can't underscore this enough. FAAN has done an exemplary job with the relationships they have established with the food manufacturing industry and as such they are on top of the food errors that occur. Just my two cents for what it is worth!

Love,

Lisa

The biggest topic that I get private e-mails about is kitchen failures when it comes to gluten-free and allergy free baking. So, now it is time to tell a whopper on myself! Today I had a baking disaster! I mean a total and complete gluten-free and allergen free baking bummer. Of course, I can think of other adjectives to use here, but I don't want to be overly melodramatic. I share this with you to bring comfort to the beginners - even those of us with 12 plus years of gluten-free and allergy-free baking experience bomb in the kitchen now and then! Even those of us who have published a celiac and allergy cookbook have failures now and then! So what was the problem? Yes, I really want to share that with you as well as the total experience! The problem today was the fat that I used to grease the mini-baking muffin tins. Say what?

Yes, in the gluten-free and allergy-free baking arena the fat that you use to grease a pan matters. Let me tell you what does not work - at least not of late - one non-dairy margarine and one non-dairy margarine substitutes (brand names excluded for legal liability reasons)! I ran out of the normal baking spray that I use to grease the mini-muffin tins, so I used some non-dairy and mostly allergen free margarine (contains some soy) and the brownie bites that I was making would not come out of the pan. Let me say, even with a knife going gently around the edge of the pan, these brownie bites could not be saved! If a picture is worth a thousand words, here is a picture to show my gluten-free and allergen-free baking disaster of the day.

Let's take one more look at this:

These brownie bites were literally in pieces! Now, here is the upshot - they will be eaten. How they will be used up eventually is in ice cream sundae's. Non-dairy, gluten-free, allergen-free ice cream sundae's that is. They will also be used in our "pretend" DQ™ Blizzards - the ones that we make at home with non-dairy (and gluten-free) ice cream and candy or cookies. Yes, these bits and pieces of brownies will definitely be eaten over time. For now, they have been lovingly thrown (LOL) into the deep freeze. Another use for these could be dried out a bit and crumbled for a dessert pie crust.

Going back to greasing the pans. Did anyone notice in the last few months to a year that the baking sprays have changed? I noticed the label and the ingredient change a while back, but I didn't think much of it...it seems to me that the brownie bites that we have been making for years just don't slide out of the pan like they used to. Where else does the non-dairy (allergen free) margarine substitute not work out as well? Two recipes come to mind immediately - one is frosting and the other is rice crispy treats (made with a gluten-free cereal of course). The frosting with some non-dairy margarine substitutes will be too runny for my tastes and not very creamy or soft. One of the non-dairy margarine substitutes we use makes the rice crispy treats seem stale. It is definitely the margarine substitute and not the cereal.

I hope that this will make some of the beginners feel a tad bit better. I recommend that beginners stick to a few helpful guidelines to avoid failures in the beginning:

1. Use a proven recipe (just any old recipe from the internet may or may not work)

2. Don't make any substitutions in a recipe until you have had success

3. Make sure you understand how the flour is measured (I use the method invented and supported by my friend and mentor, Bette Hagman, may she rest in peace)

4. Use an oven thermometer

5. Turn OFF Convection Bake if you are using my recipes

I hope you have many, many successes in the gluten-free and allergen-free baking area! Let me know how I can support and empower you in the kitchen!

Love,

Lisa 

With the advent of the internet, consumers and medical researchers like myself have access to a whole host of sound medical literature. This is by far and away one of the most important blog posts I have ever written. The testing I am about to share with you helped to save my daughter’s life. As it would turn out, we would only discover some six years into her health journey that elevated Secretory IgA was the underlying cause of many if not most of her health problems. By finally discovering this fact through diagnostic testing (out-of-network), we were able to avoid cancer, leukemia, cirrhosis of the liver and other horrific health problems.  My special thanks to Dr. Gene Mayer from the University of South Carolina School of Medicine for the information I am about to share. This comes from “Immunology – Chapter Four: Immunoglobulins – Structure and Function. The link to this information is: http://pathmicro.med.sc.edu/mayer/lgStruct2000.htm

First of all, I went looking for information on Secretory IgA after my daughter’s medical diagnostic testing came back with elevated Secretory IgA. This was not a medical term that I was familiar with, and in the last two years I have not found a lot of physicians who are familiar with it either. For the lay reader, IgA is an Immuoglobulin class. If you have severe food allergies of the life-threatening variety, that falls into the IgE (Epsilon heavy chains) class of Immuoglobulins.

Secretory IgA is found in saliva in the mouth, throughout the gastrointestinal tract and in the mucous secretions throughout the body. Here are what Dr. Mayer’s text listed as outcomes (as I read it) for increased Secretory IgA:

1. Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome
2. Cirrhosis of the liver (most cases)
3. Certain stages of collagen and other autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus erythematosus
4. Chronic infections not based on immunologic deficiencies
5. IgA myeloma

Decreased IgA would be potentially related to:

1. Hereditary ataxia telangiectasia
2. Immunologic deficiency states
3. Malabsorption syndromes
4. Lymphoid aplasia
5. IgG meyloma
6. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia
7. Chronic lymphoblastic leukemia

 Myeloma is a form of cancer. Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome (WAS) can be pretty serious as well and leads to malignancies in up to one-third of the patients with WAS. Cirrhosis of the liver is the twelfth-leading cause of death in the U.S. according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as referenced by the National Digestive Disorders Information Clearinghouse (NDDIC). Leukemia we pretty much all know is very serious and life-threatening.

All of which says to me that Secretory IgA is pretty important. From a laboratory source (Individual Wellbeing Diagnostic Laboratories), I found that Secretory IgA (SIgA) is our first line of defense against bacteria, food toxins, fungus, parasites and viruses. While I can not assert that this is in fact the case, I do personally believe that from the above information that elevated or low levels of Secretory IgA in and of themselves merit investigation or testing for individuals with chronic health conditions that are not otherwise sourced by some medical fact.

 What does this mean to you the average consumer? It means, like in most instances in health care, that you must be proactive and be your own health advocate. Perhaps this means that you ask your physician or specialist if you have been tested for Secretory IgA. We did my daughter’s SIgA testing by stool. You can also check the diagnostic testing companies’ websites that market such testing for additional support and information. If I had a chronic health condition that was not being resolved to my satisfaction, or if I had any of the above conditions, I would consider ruling out elevated or low SIgA. After all, traditional mainstream medicine is primarily based on ruling out (or in) medical conditions. Let me know your questions and comments on this post!

Love,

Lisa