It's Food Allergy Awareness Week!

I, of course, have to jump on this bandwagon and tell everyone I know, hooray for Food Allergy Awareness Week!!

This week, with the exception of a little tangent tomorrow, I will be just talking about food allergies. I know, I know, it won't be that different from normal, but it'll still be fun! You can read about the beginning of our adventure with having a child with food allergies by clicking the "Food Allergies" section at the top, or clicking here. 

My sweet, perfect baby, who also happens to have food allergies.

I have a few ideas in mind for this week, but I also want to hear from you, do you have any questions about food allergies? Anything you would like me to babble about? Leave me a note in the comments or email me at Emily@marquisnemily.com, I'd love to know what questions you have!

I'm also issuing a challenge. For this week I challenge everyone to choose a common food allergy and try to avoid that food for an entire week. The top 8 most common food allergies are peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, soy, dairy, wheat, fish and shellfish. Usually avoiding fish and shellfish is pretty easy, and really avoiding peanuts and tree nuts is a lot easier than it used to be. If you'd like to really experience what my little family does every day, choose the eggs. You will have to make sure you are checking labels for eggs hidden inside baked goods and many other things, because avoiding eggs means more than just not having a pile scrambled beside your toast for breakfast. Soy is another thing that is an ingredient in so many things that you would never think about until you start reading labels. If you really want to make your life hard, though, choose the dairy or wheat. I'm so very grateful Sweetheart doesn't have these allergies, because I happen to have a torrid love affair with both bread and good cheese. And if you start checking labels, you will find dairy and wheat are in everything! Watch out, sometimes milk hides under some other names, like whey. For more info, here is a post I did about common places some allergens like to hide. 

I would love to hear about anyone who decides to take this challenge, what your experience is like, what surprises you have. If you decide to do this, please share your results with me! 

For more info about Food Allergy Awareness Week, go here.