Category Archives: Product Review

My little one had to keep away from all the top 8 food allergens and a few more till age 4 – wheat, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shell fish, soy, dairy, peas, sesame, poppy seeds, sunflower seeds and garbanzo beans. The only place he lucked out was – he was not allergic to the gluten part of the wheat protein so he could try oats and barley. So, in the first instant it seemed like there was literally nothing he could eat but I did find quite a few items that he could have. My son has outgrown a few allergies like wheat so remembering the brands free of all the top 8 food allergens was a trip down memory lane. I have not mentioned any of the Indian brands I use because I use it exclusively for Indian cooking and neither have I mentioned local New Jersey brands that I see and pick up once in a while in my local health food store but the supply is not consistent. Given my background in Food and Nutrition – my focus has been on nutrition and variety. Here are some of the go-to brands in our Allergy Friendly household (I will keep updating as I remember more or find new brands). Here are my top go-to AF (Allergy Friendly) picks as of now…

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Living with food allergies is no cake-walk but these days whenever I walk down the aisle of any health food-store, I feel like a kid in a candy store The Allergy Friendly market is bursting with new products every other day that it just gets me so excited. My latest find – ‘Flaxmilk’!

Photo Courtesy: www.flaxusa.com

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With holidays right around the corner, a good butter substitute is the urgent need of the hour! AF (Allergy Friendly) does not mean that our sugar cookies, cakes and breads should taste gross

So, here is a little secret from my kitchen to yours…psst – ‘Earth Balance’ range of products!

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It is a good time for those with multiple food allergies in the quest for dairy alternatives. There are more substitutes available than ever before – Rice Milk, Oat Milk, and more recently Hemp Milk.  Personally, I find Hemp Milk by far the most nutritious because it has a much higher fat and protein content than the either Oat or Rice milk. That is a definite plus when giving it as a dairy alternative to children – especially the balanced quantities of fatty and amino acids. Living Harvest - a company with its roots in Canada and presently headquartered in Portland, Oregon (surprise, surprise )  is the force behind Tempt Hemp Milk and other Hemp Milk products. Hemp Milk is definitely a very creamy dairy substitute and works quite well in cooking too. I have used it to make rice pudding, soups, pasta sauce etc. but as a drink my little one din’t quite like it. However, if you like the taste and are not allergic to Hemp seed - Hemp Milk is definitely one of the most nutritious dairy alternative drinks to try. Living Harvest has a great short write-up about Hemp which is definitely worth a read and titled ‘Why hemp?‘

Courtesy: Picture taken from Living Harvest, Tempt website.

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After months of being unavailable Vegan Rella is back on store shelves. I had asked my local health food store, ‘Fountain of Vitality’ to save me a couple of blocks the moment it came in. Awesome of them to do it because they had managed to get only a small supply and that had flown off the shelves by the time I got there. If Vegan Rella is the only kind of cheese you or someone known to you can have,  make the trip to the store immediately. The joy on my son’s face as he bit into the cheese – priceless  

Vegan Rella is manufactured by  Panos Brands. Their customer servicer personnel are quite helpful and can be reached at:   

Phone #: 1-201-843-8900 Email address: info@panosbrands.com / customer.service@panosbrands.com 

For all those consumers who are wondering what happened to Vegan Rella Cheese – I called up the company to enquire about the non-availability of Vegan Rella. The customer service representative I talked to said that due to supply problems of one of the ingredients, there has been no production of  vegan rella for the past 2 months. This problem should be set right in the next 2 weeks and consumers should start seeing vegan rella cheese in store shelves starting January 2010.

I heaved a sigh of relief since this is the only brand of allergy friendly cheese whcih actually melts and tastes reasonably good!

Whoever said ‘Save Earth. It is the only planet with chocolate’ got it right. When my son was diagnosed with being allergic to all the top 8 food allergens and more,  my second thought (first was ‘why me?’) was, ‘my son can never eat chocolate .’ Then the good folks at Enjoy Life foods came up with chocolate made from rice milk  and it is definitely their best product yet. My son and even his friends who have no allergies love it!

***This picture has been taken from Enjoy Life’s website.

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